


In Waking

by actualite



Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:26:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualite/pseuds/actualite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Salty are kidnapped on a goodwill tour in Venezuela.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Waking

**Author's Note:**

> The violence is brief. Also, I do not know any Spanish, unfortunately.

_November 2013_

It took several minutes after regaining consciousness for Ian to realize that he was not waking up the normal way. 

After trying to open his eyes several times he realized they were already open, but he was somewhere very dark, and it was most emphatically not his bedroom and not a hotel room. _Why the fuck am I on the ground,_ he thought hazily, as panic began to set in. He tried as hard as he could to pull himself out of the haze and when he was finally able to, his head throbbing and the back of his throat burning, he rolled his head around and tried to sit up.

That was when he realized his hands were bound together and his ribs ached.

In a flash he remembered. The gridlocked traffic. The sudden sound of a window smashing out of nowhere. The chaos and panic that followed as the driver and handlers were shouting and men with netting over their faces pointed guns at them. Salty leaning over Ian quickly and trying to shove the car door open before they were both smothered with rags soaked in what must have been chloroform.

Salty! Had he been kidnapped too? Where was he? Was Ian alone in this hot, dark, damp space?

"Hey!" Ian croaked into the darkness, his heart beating quickly. 

"Kins?" someone said in a hoarse voice, and Ian's whole chest seemed to flood with relief.

"Salty," Ian said. "Thank fuck."

"You all tied up too?"

Ian tested the tension of whatever it was around his wrists and ankles. He lifted his hands to try to bite at whatever was holding them together, but he realized it was some kind of cable, impossible to chew through.

"Yeah," he said, as suddenly the blood rushed to his ears and he began to feel hot all over. "Salty," he repeated, starting to feel frantic again, the relief of a moment ago quickly dissipating. His throat felt like it was closing up and he fought for air. "Fucking--we're trapped. I'm tied up. What the fuck are we gonna do?" 

"Ian--"

"Seriously, I can't move--my hands are tied up and it's dark, I can't fucking see. I can't fucking see anything!"

He started to gasp, his chest tightening, and he started to wheeze. The blood was rushing in his ears even more loudly and he felt like he could see purple spots in the darkness. "Fuck!" he choked out, his diaphragm spasming. He didn't have an inhaler and the air was so stifling--

"Ian!"

The sound of Salty's voice was faint through the rushing in his ears and Ian closed his eyes, though it didn't make much difference, since it was so dark. Realizing that only made him panic more and he started to wheeze even harder, his asthma starting to act up. He hadn't had an asthma attack in years, and what if his throat closed up completely? Oh God, he was going to suffocate in this dark space, this claustrophobic, stifling place where they'd been dumped and forgotten, and no one would ever find them--

"Where are you, Ian? Talk to me," Salty was saying.

But Ian couldn't talk, his hyperventilating getting worse and worse, and he writhed on the ground, knowing he needed to calm down but unable to.

He felt rather than heard a couple of thumps and then he felt hands on his face. 

"Got you," Salty said, and Ian felt Salty hoist himself up against Ian, tucking Ian's head under his chin, or so it felt like.

"Don't--hug--me," Ian gasped, thinking it would just make him feel more stifled, but the words came out garbled and he was starting to see stars.

"Just calm down, Ian, it's gonna be okay," Salty said, and then he kept repeating those words over and over. Ian could feel Salty fumbling to get his arms around Ian to stroke his back as best he could. He must've been all tied up too.

"Breathe, Kins," Salty was saying. "In and out. Just concentrate on that. You'll be fine. We'll be okay."

Ian squeezed his eyes shut and tried to forget about his hands and his ankles and the darkness. He focused as hard as he could on the timbre of Salty's voice, unable to even really process the meaning of the words he was saying, but strangely calmed by the way Salty was nearly enveloping him. They were in this together. Ian was not alone. Somehow they would keep each other alive and figure out how to get out of this.

After a few seconds that felt like hours Ian began to feel his heart rate slow and his muscles relax a little. He was still shaking but it was no longer out of terror.

"Sorry," he managed finally, still breathing hard. "I haven't had a panic attack or an asthma attack in years."

"I almost had a panic attack myself when I woke up a few minutes ago," Salty said. He was still stroking Ian's back with the backs of his hands. "Thought I was alone at first but then I could hear breathing. Wasn't sure it was you until I heard your voice."

"Do you think there's anyone else in here?" Ian said, wishing he could see.

"I don't think so," Salty said.

"We were kidnapped," Ian said slowly, the realization sinking in. "We were actually fucking kidnapped. I can't believe it."

"Can't you?" Salty said, and his voice sounded wry.

That annoyed Ian, and he immediately felt better. "You can stop, like, rubbing my back now," he said, leaning away from Salty.

Salty was silent, merely shifting away from Ian slightly. As soon as he did Ian wished he hadn't. Despite the stifling heat it had still been comforting to feel another person near in the darkness.

"I have a bitch of a headache," Ian said. "And I'm really thirsty. And I really have to take a piss."

"Well," Salty said, "You can try to get your dick out of your pants but I don't think it'll make much difference."

"You mean--go in my pants?" Ian said, though he knew the answer.

"Just be glad it ain't number two. Yet," Salty said.

"Ugh," Ian groaned. "This is the worst."

"Nah," Salty said. "It could always be worse."

"Is that your answer to everything?" Ian said, exasperated.

"Pretty much," Salty said placidly. "As long as we're alive, anyway."

Ian swallowed hard, his dry throat still stinging. Was not being alive a real possibility?

They were in Venezuela, or at least they had been before the kidnapping, on a goodwill tour organized by Major League Baseball that was also supposed to stop in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Before the exhibition series a few of them had volunteered to visit some local schools and youth baseball camps to give short clinics and sign autographs. There'd been three cars with two players each in them. Ian wondered if the other cars had been attacked, too. Before the trip they'd been briefed on what to do in the event of a kidnapping but Ian hadn't paid much attention, holding what he now realized was a very arrogant and stupid conviction that no one would have the balls to try to kidnap white players.

"I hope someone has contacted the Embassy. I hope they have the State Department or the Feds or the CIA or whoever on this. They can't get away with this, right?" he demanded.

"I hope not," Salty said. "They told us in that briefing that what these guys want is money. It's a business. I don't think they want us dead."

"Well that is a fucking relief," Ian said sarcastically. "I'm glad we can trust the word of a bunch of smug douchebags in polo shirts and khaki shorts who've never been trapped in a container all trussed up like a turkey talking about how it's just a business."

"They know what they're talking about," Salty said mildly. "I think they deal with this kind of stuff all the time. You gotta trust them."

"I don't trust anybody right now," Ian said.

"Not even me?" Salty said, sounding hurt.

Ian wanted to roll his eyes but then he realized Salty would not be able to see it. Salty's very long-standing and overt obsession with being trusted by his teammates had always been weird and embarrassing and slightly creepy, he'd always thought. So he ignored the question. "What do you think would happen if we started screaming?"

"Probably nothing," Salty said. "I'm guessing we're in a container or something. And if that's the case there's probably no one around to hear us. Or there's one of those thugs right outside and they'll just ignore us."

For some reason this made Ian incredibly angry. Perhaps it was the hopeless and inevitable nature of the logic, or the fact that Salty could sound so calm while uttering it.

"HELP!" Ian screamed, as loudly as he could. The sound reverberated off the small walls of the container and Ian had a terrifying moment of feeling as if there were no way the sound of his voice could penetrate the walls. "HELP! HELP! HEEEEEELP!" He cried again, over and over.

"Ian, stop," Salty said, but Ian ignored him, continuing to scream the word over and over again.

"All you'll do is tire yourself out," Salty shouted over Ian's yelling.

"What," Ian shot back, "so I'm just supposed to sit here on my ass like you are, doing nothing and waiting quietly for someone to come back here and shoot us in the head when our wives don't cough up twenty million dollars to pay these people off? Fuck that," Ian said. "HELP! SOMEBODY! PLEASE!"

He shouted and shouted and even crawled over to one of the walls to bang his fists against it. The metal was hard and unforgiving.

After a few more screams his throat started to hurt but he tried to keep going, leaning against the wall, not wanting to stop because that would mean acknowledging that Salty had been right, and there was really nothing they could do but wait.

But then his voice began to crack and he couldn't go on anymore, and he slumped down on the ground, which was wet and smelled extremely bad.

"Ugh," Ian said, sitting up, some of the thin sludge that was on the floor dribbling down his chin. He shrugged his shoulder up to try to wipe at it with the fabric of his t-shirt.

"You done?" Salty said dryly, and it might've been the first time Ian had heard Salty be short with anyone but himself.

"Fuck you," Ian croaked weakly. "My head really hurts."

"So does mine," Salty said.

Ian's throat hurt, too, but he didn't want to bring that up again, especially after screaming himself hoarse against Salty's advice. So he just slumped over his knees. The binding around his wrists was just tight enough to make his hands feel tingly and he stretched out his fingers a few times, wondering distractedly if it was easier to die of gangrene or thirst. Probably thirst, because it would be quicker, right?

Once his own breathing quieted he could hear something dripping very slowly into a small puddle somewhere inside the container, and then the sound of Salty's breathing, too.

He sat there, still and silent, and just listened to those sounds. They were both very steady, the even rhythm making them both seem inevitable and eternal. Ian was comforted by this.

He closed his eyes, even though it made no difference, and tried to calm himself down. He thought about all the men who had survived solitary confinement, long incarceration, people who had endured much worse than this for much longer and hadn't had anyone to go through it with them. And he tried not to think about what might be in store, and whether or not these weren't just kidnappers. Maybe they were terrorists, or had some kind of vendetta against MLB, or had other motives more sinister than mercenary ones. Ian cut off his thoughts at this point.

Some time passed, long enough for Ian to not know whether it had been a long or short period, and then he heard Salty clear his throat a bit.

"What did you mean before when you said our wives wouldn't cough up the money?" he asked. "You don't think your wife would?"

Ian opened his eyes and turned his head toward the sound of Salty's voice.

"I don't know," he said.

"Wow, really?" Salty said. "I guess it didn't even occur to me that my wife might not."

Ian paused a moment. "Well. Maybe you have a different relationship with your wife than I do."

"You really think she'd rather leave you to rot with these fuckers than pay up?" Salty said.

Ian sighed heavily. "Probably not. I honestly don't know." She probably would pay up but not before seriously considering not paying. Ian was pretty sure there was very little Tess cared about anymore except money. Maybe her reputation, which is what would prevent her from leaving Ian to the wolves.

"As long as your wife doesn't secretly hate you, I'm sure you have nothing to worry about," Ian said.

"Didn't you get the kidnapping insurance?" Salty said.

"What kidnapping insurance?"

"The kidnapping insurance they told us all to get. It was in that info packet they sent. And they talked about it at the orientation thing."

"I don't know. I guess my agent probably got it. I signed a bunch of papers."

"You probably got it. Then you don't gotta worry about how much your wife hates you or whatever," Salty said.

Ian wanted to roll his eyes again.

"I'm sure she doesn't hate you anyway," Salty continued chattily. "And even if she did hate you she wouldn't want you dead. Why would she stay married to you if she hates you?"

Ian wished Salty could see the look of incredulity on his face. "Are you seriously that fucking naive?" he said, more forcefully than necessary.

"Well, why would _you_ stay married to her if she hates you?"

The simplicity of the question caught Ian off-guard. "Well--well there are tons of reasons people stay married even if they hate each other."

"Maybe, but that ain't good for anyone involved."

"Dude. I'm not here for fucking marriage counseling," Ian said, annoyed again.

Salty was quiet for a moment. "Just trying to pass the time by making conversation," he said eventually.

Ian felt bad, then. He infinitely preferred Salty's inane and unwanted observations about his personal life to giving his mind the opportunity to wander to every worst-case scenario. "No, it's. It's a sensitive subject, I guess," he said.

"Do you hate your wife?" Salty asked.

"Jesus, personal much?"

"Aw, come on. It's not like we've never met before," Salty said.

"Well, we were never, like, friends," Ian said without thinking.

There was another pause. "I thought of you as a friend," Salty said.

Ian let his head fall back and closed his eyes again. "Whatever," he said. "Yeah, we're friends."

Salty was silent.

"Why?" Ian said, perversely desirous of continuing the conversation when all he'd done was throw cold water over Salty's attempts. "Do you think your wife is as beautiful as the day you met her and all that Hallmark crap?"

"My wife's done a lot for our kids. For me," Salty said.

"Did you marry her because of how much she would do for your family?" Ian said.

"Well, not at the time, no."

Ian thought about biting his nails before answering, but they'd been on the floor in the sludge. He'd probably get a parasite. "See, I did," he said.

"You did what?"

"I married my wife mostly because I thought she'd be a good wife and I'd known her forever. Turns out that's not really enough. At least, not for her."

"What, you playin' around?"

"Not in the way that counts," Ian said. For some reason he felt ashamed, which was not usually the case when discussing this topic with other ballplayers. "Anyway, none of it matters if we get our heads lopped off and our bodies dumped in a marsh here, right?"

"What's the way where it doesn't count?" Salty said, ignoring the last part.

"It's not like I've gotten anyone pregnant or fell in love or some shit," Ian said impatiently.

"Women see it different," Salty said.

"You think I don't know that?" Fuck it, Ian was going to chew his nails anyway. "But even in the beginning when I was actually making an effort she was sure I was cheating anyway and made my life fucking miserable. So I thought, why am I putting myself through this? We're ballplayers. Everyone expects it. I'll hear about it either way, so might as well have some fun."

"Huh," Salty said.

Ian heard judgment in the sound. "So you've never? Is that what you're saying?" he retorted. "It must be nice to sit on your high horse judging everybody."

Salty cleared his throat. "I done some things I'm not proud of," he said. "But it sounds like our wives handle this stuff different."

"What, does your wife turn a blind eye?" Ian said.

"No. But she says that because of the difference in our ages she knows I have needs that she won't be able to or won't want to fulfill and that as long as I'm safe and let her know when something happens she's okay with it."

Ian cringed inwardly. What an embarrassing conversation. He suddenly remembered the way Salty would always overshare about everything back when their lockers were close to each other in the Rangers clubhouse and Salty was always talking his ear off. Apparently he hadn't grown out of that.

"She says that," Salty continued, "but I think she's still hurt by it and honestly it makes me feel even worse than I think I would if she flipped out."

"Well, if you care about her feelings so much why do you do it, then?" Ian said.

Salty paused. "I just get so lonely sometimes," he said finally. "On the road and whatnot."

"Just bring your wife with you. In fact, why isn't she on this trip?"

"She didn't want to come," Salty said.

"If she didn't want to come and you get lonely without her why'd you come?" Ian asked. He was getting genuinely curious about Salty in spite of himself. "It's not like it was mandatory."

"I missed baseball," Salty said.

Ian couldn't argue with that. It's why he'd come, too. Seeing a group of guys at the ballpark to work out every day during the offseason just wasn't the same. Here there were a bunch of superstar baseball players, albeit mostly Latin ones, a bunch of cameras following them around, crowds of people showing up to hear them talk and see them play. As much as Ian hated to admit it, it was addictive. Recently he'd been starting to think about how close he was to not having it anymore, and that depressed him.

"I can't believe this is happening," Ian said. All he'd wanted was a week of baseball. "Do you think any of the other guys got kidnapped?"

"I don't know. It all happened so fast. I didn't get a good look at the other cars. We should've volunteered for the hospital visit instead. Those guys are probably fine," Salty said gloomily.

"Yeah," Ian said. "I just didn't know if I'd be prepared for what a Venezuelan hospital would be like."

"Just like any other hospital, I'd imagine. A bunch of sick kids and their parents tryin' to act like a visit from some ballplayers cheers them up a bit."

"Yeah, but..." Ian trailed off. Upon reflection, his unfounded opinions of what a poor country's hospitals would be like were probably not the kind of thing he should say out loud. "Well, anyway, I'd give anything to be there now instead of here."

"Me too."

They were quiet for a while after that, and Ian began to feel so thirsty he was thinking of finding the source of the drip and testing whether it was water or not.

"How long do you think we've been locked in here?" he asked Salty. "Long enough to be dehydrated?"

"I don't know. I guess any amount of time is long enough to be dehydrated, isn't it? If you're thirsty, I mean."

"Ugh," Ian said, frustrated with Salty's literalism. "Okay, how long were you awake before I woke up?"

"It felt like a long time," Salty said. "But then I was a lot more scared not knowing if it was you or not, and time goes slower when you're scared."

"Maybe we've only been in here for like ten minutes," Ian said.

"I think it's been longer than that," Salty said.

"Already sick of me, are you?" Ian said, trying for some humor. "Well you'd better get used to it. I have a feeling we'll be here a while."

"I could never be sick of you," Salty said.

Disconcerted, Ian didn't know what to answer to that so he kept quiet. Salty was quiet too, and they sat there in the darkness for a long time, listening to the drip.

*

"I really need to go," Ian said after a while.

He heard Salty stir a little. "Me too," he said. "I was thinkin' of tryin' to do it in the corner but with my hands tied up it ain't gonna make much difference."

Ian didn't know exactly how to articulate what he'd been thinking but things were getting bad enough that he thought he should try.

"So...how long do you think we're gonna be here?" he asked.

"You already asked that," Salty said. "Unless I masterminded this whole thing I don't know why you'd think I know the answer."

"But really. Because if it's not gonna be very long then we should just go. But if it is going to be a long time we might have to, like. Drink each other's piss."

There was a significant pause. 

"So," Salty said finally. "Are you suggesting we pee into each other's mouths?"

"Well how else are we gonna do it? It's not like we can capture it in jars and ration it out at intervals. And I don't know about you but I'm not flexible enough to drink my own."

"Are you really that thirsty already?" Salty said. "Because I think I can go a few more hours at least before I get serious about drinking your pee. No offense."

"Well it's not like I'm dying to sample yours," Ian retorted. "But I am getting really thirsty and whatever's dripping into here is probably toxic. At least urine is supposed to be sterile. Isn't it?"

"I have no idea," Salty said.

"That's what Rip Torn says in _Dodgeball_ ," Ian said. He tried out his best Rip Torn voice. "'I don't have to drink my own urine. But it's sterile, and I like the taste of it.'"

Salty laughed. "What a great movie."

"Yeah," Ian said. "Not my favorite Stiller, but up there, I guess." 

There was another short silence and Ian wondered if he'd ever get to see another movie again.

"Tell you what," Salty said after a while. "Let's wait a couple more hours. If no one comes to get us then we can figure something out."

"So I have to hold it for a few more hours?" Ian said, feeling a little frantic. "I'm about to burst. I drank a lot at breakfast."

"Go ahead and go," Salty said. "I guess I'll just drink what's left over."

"Okay. Maybe we can figure out a way to share yours if there's not enough," Ian said, in the spirit of generosity.

"This is a really weird conversation."

"It's a weird situation, alright?" Ian said defensively.

"I know, I know."

Ian hurriedly stood up, wobbling a little, and tried to feel his way along the wall as best he could with his tied up hands, away from the sound of Salty's voice, and he reached a corner. Getting his pants unzipped was difficult but luckily his hands were tied in front and not in back. He tried to conserve some for later, just in case Salty didn't have enough and they were stuck here longer than they thought.

After he was done he made his way back to where they'd been sitting.

"Feel better?" Salty said.

"Yeah," Ian said.

Silence descended again.

"What if no one comes?" Ian said.

"Someone will come," Salty said firmly. "They wouldn't just kidnap two American ballplayers to dump in a container and not get anything back for it. Unless you're mixed up in something bad and a drug lord is after you."

Ian knew Salty was probably teasing but he'd always been faintly disapproving when he saw Ian and some of the other guys getting high.

"Of course not," Ian said, feeling a bit defensive. "I haven't done any of that in years. And anyway, buying a little weed once in a while isn't enough to get you on some drug lord's shit list."

"I was just kidding," Salty said mildly. "My point is they'll give us back when they get paid or the police find us. And if we're in bad shape that'll be worse for them. We just have to wait."

"I'm fucking tired of waiting," Ian said.

"I know," Salty said. He sounded sympathetic and condescending, which was fucking annoying, because it made Ian feel like a whiner.

"And none of this is affecting you at all, right?" he said irritably. "I'm just being a baby about everything."

"Well, the smell of your piss isn't all that pleasant," Salty said flatly. "But other than that, I'm having the time of my life."

Ian was embarrassed. "Sorry, I'm just frustrated," he said.

"So am I," Salty said. "If I thought throwing myself against the walls would help, believe me, I'd be doing it."

Ian was quiet for a while. The smell of pee was a bit suffocating. "You should've drunk it," he said. "Then at least we wouldn't be smelling it."

"Yeah, I'd just be tasting it," Salty said.

Ian was slightly offended at how opposed Salty was to drinking his pee. "I'd drink yours without making a big production out of it," he said sulkily.

"You excited to drink my pee, Kins?" Salty said. He sounded amused.

"No," Ian said, but he couldn't help smiling a little. 

"Maybe you're just excited to get my dick in your mouth."

"Don't be disgusting, man," Ian said. "It would be purely survival instinct."

"Keep telling yourself that," Salty said.

This smug Salty was something new, Ian thought. "Wow, being in Boston has really puffed you up, hasn't it?"

"Nah, I was always like this. You just never talked to me long enough to realize before."

"I talked to you plenty!" Ian said.

"No, I talked to you," Salty said. "I don't think you was listening most of the time."

"Well--sorry," Ian said, feeling defensive again.

"It's cool," Salty said. "I was an annoying kid."

"We all were," Ian said. "Still are, probably."

"That was a fun clubhouse," Salty said, sounding a little wistful. "But I was never really part of things there. I guess it was pretty obvious I wasn't meant to stay."

"Did you want to stay?" Ian said, surprised. "I thought I heard that you'd asked to be traded."

"Yeah, I did. Things just weren't right for me there. Wish I had fit in a little better, obviously, but then there are tons of guys who would've liked to go to the World Series twice in a row."

Ian thought back to the last year Salty had really been with the team. It had been a sort of age of innocence, everything on its way up, their dreams still bigger than reality. Things were really different now. He remembered back then how important he'd thought it was to influence the other guys, younger guys or guys new to the team, and how strongly he'd felt that the guys who didn't click with everyone else were dragging the rest of them down and keeping them from what they were capable of. He'd probably done his share of making Salty feel like an outsider, and the thought was uncomfortable.

"You put it together, though," Ian said. "Maybe that wouldn't have happened if you'd stayed. I mean, we've all definitely wondered where we could've gone if you'd figured things out when you were still with us."

"Yeah," Salty said. "Wish it could've worked out, but no sense thinking about what could've been, I guess. Boston's been good to me. They believed in me."

Ian made a vague noise of agreement, though he'd always thought Salty's problem was that he relied too much on other people believing in him rather than believing in himself. The more Ian thought about it, actually, the more he wondered why no one had ever questioned Salty about this before.

"Wait, why do you care so much about other people believing in you? Seems like that's a recipe for disaster," Ian said.

Salty paused for a moment before answering. "I guess I just want people to trust me," he said. "I've always wanted that."

"Baseball isn't about trust," Ian said. "I mean, maybe it is sometimes but not any more than anything else."

"I don't know," Salty said. "When I was younger a lot of people looked at me and wrote me off right away because they thought they knew who I was and all I'd amount to."

"What are you talking about? Weren't you a top prospect out of high school and all that? No one wrote you off."

"No, I mean before," Salty said. "When I was younger. And I don't mean baseball scouts. I mean other kids. Teachers. Even family members."

"You have a hard time at school?" Ian asked, finding it difficult to imagine a big strong dude like Salty getting bullied by anyone.

"I guess you could say that," Salty said.

"But a bunch of us go through that at some point in our lives. Hell, it was happening to me in college," Ian said.

"It's not really something I can explain," Salty said. "It just means a lot to me when I see someone look at me and they're trusting me not to be a fuckup, whether it's one of my pitchers or one of my daughters. And on the Rangers--everyone was waiting for me to fail."

"No they weren't," Ian said. "We all wanted you to succeed. You were part of that big trade."

"There's a difference between wanting someone to fail and waiting for someone to fail," Salty said.

"And you're telling me no one in Boston was waiting for you to fail?" Ian said skeptically.

"Sure they were. But not the people who counted, the people around me, the people who were giving me the job. I don't know, maybe it's because they were still pretty secure in what they had and didn't need to worry about what I was bringing so much. But with a club like the Rangers--they had a lot riding on every one of us, especially that year with the ownership situation and all, and even if JD and them wanted me to figure it all out they had to have some good backup plans in case I didn't." Salty paused again. "I mean, I don't hold it against them. I understood. But I think that's why it was never gonna work for me in Texas. Not then, at least."

"I think that attitude leaves you on pretty shaky ground," Ian said. "I mean, you're asking for people to believe in you before you've proven yourself. Isn't that a little unfair?"

"Maybe, but catching ain't like other positions," Salty said. "I knew even back then that I needed time. They had to give me time, and time was something they didn't have. I mean, their fuckin' motto the year they got rid of me was 'It's Time.' They wanted a rookie superstar but I couldn't do what I needed to do and be that, too."

Ian remembered what that was like. He remembered everyone expecting him to play as if he'd been in the big leagues for five years longer than he had been. Honestly, he'd thrived under the pressure of trying to prove everyone wrong about him when they were all talking about how he couldn't cut it and misunderstood almost everything about him and his approach, his work ethic, his dedication, his abilities.

"We were really young," Ian said, lost in the past. "It's weird to think about."

"Yeah," Salty agreed.

Ian sighed and got a noseful of urine smell. "Ugh. Is this how it all ends for us?"

"'Course not," Salty said. "We'll be out of here soon."

"Yeah," Ian said hollowly. But despite Salty's apparent need to be believed in, Ian couldn't quite muster it.

*

It must've been at least a couple of hours later when Ian suddenly heard voices. He sat up. There were some guys talking to each other and then the sound of metal creaking against metal, a big screeching sound, and his heart started to pound. 

"Salty," Ian said, hearing the fear in his own voice.

"Try to stick together," was all Salty had time to say before one of the walls seemed to vanish and the inside of the container was flooded with bright light.

Ian winced away from it, his eyes sensitive after so many hours in the dark, and he couldn't see much of anything. When he opened them again, however, he saw that the light had been coming from some flashlights, and it was actually nighttime.

The men were speaking very rapidly in Spanish and Ian couldn't understand any of it. Two years of Spanish way back in high school weren't doing him much good at all, and apparently he hadn't picked up anything from hanging around Latin players in the clubhouse. He was obviously an idiot.

They were yelling at both of them and two of the bigger ones forced Salty up to his feet before another guy did the same to Ian.

"Bathroom," Salty was saying slowly and distinctly as they were walking him out. "I have to use the _bathroom._ El Baño?"

The men didn't seem to be paying much attention and then Ian was preoccupied with not stumbling as he was propelled out of the container himself.

"Ugh, watch it," he said angrily as the guy holding his arm dragged him along, banging Ian's shoulder on the metal frame of the container doorway. He looked up then and saw the two guys clutching Salty's biceps as he stood facing away from Ian and Ian realized he must've been going right there. 

He took the opportunity to look around. They were in a big shipping yard of some kind and there were no stars. Ian tried to remember what they used to say in school and on the hunting and wilderness trips he'd been on about survival and finding your way somewhere but he was completely disoriented and had no idea if they were even still in Venezuela.

"Where are you taking us?" Ian said. "Dónde? A dónde me llevas?"

There was no answer, of course. The men were all masked and several of them had giant weapons that Ian could not identify.

"Agua," Ian said desperately. "Necesito agua."

But the guy handling him just roughly jerked his arm and kept pushing him forward. Ian was getting pretty mad, not only at being manhandled but at the attitude of these guys who obviously thought they were some real badasses. He was Ian fucking Kinsler, a professional athlete, and he had to be in better shape than any of them, right?

Without thinking much more about it he impulsively jerked his arm out of the man's grip, whipped both his bound hands around like he was swinging a bat, and hit the guy right in the face as hard as he could, then took off running hard.

Everything happened very quickly, then. First he heard shouting, and above all of it Salty's voice screaming, "Ian, no!" and then he heard gunfire. No sooner did that start than he tripped, spooked by the sound of the guns. His legs were tingling too, from sitting so long, and it was only a few more seconds before a few of the men were on him. 

They hit Ian in the face with the butt of a gun, the impact blanking everything for a moment. Then the pain bloomed up, bright and throbbing, and Ian nearly passed out, feeling like he needed to throw up. He told himself he had to get a grip, and just stared down at the ground, concentrating on staying conscious. Then they got out a dirty bandanna to gag him and it cut right into the place where they'd hit him, making it burn even more. They put his hands behind his back this time, retying his wrists even more tightly than they had been tied before.

Then they marched him back toward Salty, three of them surrounding him and shoving him along, now, and when he got back Salty was looking at him sorrowfully, his eyes wide and sad even in the dark.

Ian could not speak, of course, but for some reason he felt guilty about trying to make a run for it and thus leave Salty behind alone. But part of him was angry at Salty, too, for just accepting their fate and not trying to do anything about it.

They stopped in front of a black van, and as someone opened the back doors Ian caught a glimpse of another man who had been blindfolded crouched in one corner. Then suddenly someone put a bag of some kind over Ian's head, tying a knot loosely around his neck, and he couldn't see anymore.

He was pushed without ceremony into the back of the van, his shins and thighs banging hard against the bumper as he was forced to climb in, and then he felt Salty's big body bump against him. The van doors shut and a few seconds later they started to move.

"You okay, Kins?" Salty said, his voice muffled. Apparently Salty hadn't been gagged. So Ian was being punished for trying to run away. 

Ian couldn't talk with the gag in his mouth. He was drooling a little down his chin but his tongue was dry, with nowhere to rest except against the cloth, which tasted a little bit like gasoline. His cheek was still throbbing very badly and he knew there would be a giant red bruise. Was his jaw broken? It sure felt like it. It was hot and stuffy inside the bag and he wondered if he were going to suffocate. The thought just made breathing harder. He began to feel desperate to have the bag ripped off, even more claustrophobic than he had been initially when he woke up in the container.

"Hey, you're fine," Salty was saying, and Ian felt him brush their arms up together. "I'm right here."

 _A fat lot of good that does me!_ Ian wanted to shout, but he closed his eyes instead, forcing himself to slow his breathing down. It did help, he realized, thinking about Salty right next to him and also outside the suffocating confines of the bag. There was something about acknowledging the space around him that calmed Ian's heart rate and helped him slow everything down. 

"They've got a bag over my head too," Salty said. "But as long as they keep us together I think we'll be okay."

Ian didn't know about okay, but he did think he might have lost it multiple times already if Salty hadn't been with him. God, why was he so weak? And how the hell was Salty staying so calm in this situation?

Ian could only wheeze slightly around the gag, trussed up and blind as the van jolted over what seemed to be a very swervy and bumpy road. His jaw was hurting very badly and the gag was very tight. Parts of the bag were resting lightly on his face, making it itch, and rolling around on the floor of the van was extremely uncomfortable. Several times the van bounced enough that Ian was thrown violently against the side of the van, unable to compensate without his eyes to help him, and he had to drag himself back up, feeling his way back next to Salty, who then tried to hold Ian steady by hooking his ankle around Ian's. 

The other guy in the van with them was silent and Ian wondered several times whether he was even conscious, since he was making no noise.

Ian had no idea how long the drive went on. His stomach felt like it was cramping from hunger and his head was pounding, probably from thirst. He was weak and in pain and he was beginning to hatch an extreme plan to get Salty to help him try to kick the van door out so they could jump out and possibly kill themselves when suddenly he felt the van stop.

The back doors of the van opened with a creak and then Ian felt someone roughly pulling him out. He stumbled, falling to his knees in the dirt, and they yanked him up again, leading him several yards away. He heard Salty shuffling after him, and then he was forced down on his knees again. The bag was ripped off his head.

It was still dark, and they were facing the wall of a squat little building. Ian swiveled his head around. Salty was kneeling next to him, but he looked shaken and a little green. Ian wondered if Salty got carsick. If the dehydration hadn't been enough to cause nausea, the van ride definitely had been.

One of the men caught Ian looking around and he yelled at Ian in Spanish. Ian stared at him, and the guy started forward, gesturing with his gun again, and then he said, in English, "You don't move!" and pointed at the wall.

Ian hurriedly turned his head back to face the wall, wanting to avoid another blow, but then he heard sounds of struggling and a different voice screaming. The screaming was suddenly cut off a few seconds later when Ian heard the deafening report of a gunshot.

He couldn't help himself and turned around to see what had happened.

Through the darkness he saw the form of the man who had been in the back of the van with them lying in a heap on the ground, the bag still over his head but a big bloody hole blown through it.

Stunned, his ears still ringing loudly with the sound of the gunshot, Ian's eyes were drawn to the man standing a few feet away lowering his shot gun. He looked up and saw Ian staring, smirked, and walked over to the body, prodding it with his boot a couple of times and looking back at Ian.

Ian turned back to face the wall, his knees beginning to shake uncontrollably and his stomach starting to churn. Before he could even think he doubled over and heaved.

There was nothing much in his stomach, just a very sour, thin sludge, and it dribbled around the gag and down his chin as his eyes watered and he continued to gag.

"Kins," Salty said, sounding panicked. "Please."

Ian didn't really understand what Salty was asking him for but he couldn't really process much of anything. He just kept heaving and shaking, his stomach unable to bring anything up but forcing itself to try anyway, the gag exacerbating everything. He wanted to reach up and wipe at his chin but he couldn't, not with his hands tied. He couldn't do anything. He was helpless while everything in his body was careening out of control.

He felt the men grab his arms again and drag him up so that he was standing, and he saw dimly that they were leading Salty back to the van in front of him, pushing Ian along behind. They were shoved into the back again, this time with no bags on their heads, and lay in a heap on the floor of the van as the doors were slammed shut behind them.

Ian's stomach stopped clenching and he just lay there, trying to get enough air. Salty was on his back next to Ian, his hands tied and resting at his groin. He was watching Ian, actually.

The smell of vomit and stomach acid was overwhelming, stuck as it was in the dirty cloth in Ian's mouth, and Ian felt a very unmanly desire to cry. They'd just seen a man killed right next to them by the guys who were now taking them somewhere far away where they would not be found. Was this real? Was this really happening? Was it some horrible dream or alternate reality? Were they going to end up just like the dead guy, their heads blown up into a bag, lying by the side of the road for someone to find?

There was snot dribbling down his upper lip, too, he realized, and he tried to shrug his shoulder up high enough to wipe it on his sleeve but he couldn't, really, with his hands still tied behind him, so he just rolled himself up into a ball and tried to hide his face from Salty because he didn't want Salty to see him crying.

"Will you pray with me?" Salty said.

Ian didn't answer, sniffling and trying to squeeze his eyes shut hard enough that no tears would seep out.

"The Lord is my shepherd," Salty was saying quietly and rapidly, obviously reciting words from memory. "I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul."

Salty kept reciting whatever it was he was reciting from the Bible, but Ian barely listened to him. He didn't really even know if he believed in God. Maybe if he did this would be easier, like it apparently was for Salty since he wasn't losing it.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me," Salty said.

That made Ian feel even worse. Were they walking through the valley of the shadow of death? They'd just seen a man's brains blown out. Ian supposed they must be.

Salty was repeating the Psalm, Ian realized a few moments later, and he was speaking the words so quickly that Ian began to doubt it was anything other than something to do with his brain and his mouth--reciting meaningless syllables by rote and using the repetition and familiarity of them as a defense mechanism against whatever Salty was feeling himself.

 _This is not making anything better!_ Ian wanted to scream, but of course he couldn't.

It wasn't long, though, before he realized he had stopped shaking so hard. The van continued to jolt them up and down, but Ian's limbs felt heavy, as if he couldn't be so easily tossed around. Salty had stopped repeating the Bible verse over and over again and was lying next to Ian, still silently watching him.

Ian turned his face to stare at Salty too.

"We're gonna be okay," Salty said quietly, his face closer than Ian realized. He was right there next to him, breathing in the smell of Ian's vomit and sweat and tears.

It was too dark inside the van to see Salty's eyes but Ian could picture them exactly, the way they would look so sure, so irritatingly, obviously _certain_.

For some reason, Ian wished he could see them.

*

He didn't realize he'd fallen asleep again until he was being shaken awake roughly by one of the kidnappers. He gagged again, inhaling some of his saliva accidentally, which made him choke and cough around the dirty cloth. Everything hurt and he wasn't totally sure but he thought he might have at least one loose tooth in his mouth.

They must've been driving all night, or at least been left in the van all night, because it was light outside, and Ian and Salty were forced up and out through the doors.

Ian stumbled a little climbing out, but before he could really get his bearings they were herded toward a cluster of small shacks that were built up a few yards away from each other. They were in the jungle, it seemed, the shack surrounded by trees and the road and ground covered with dying organic matter--leaves, twigs, tree roots. The air was thick with moisture and uncomfortably warm, the sound of insects a constant drone in the background.

They were shoved into one of the buildings and made to sit down on two chairs, their hands still bound behind their backs. Then one of the men propped a newspaper against Ian's chest, and Ian realized that they were going to be photographed to show they were still alive.

That meant they did want them alive, he thought hazily, trying to swallow. His mouth and eyes were so dry and his stomach was cramping with hunger. Maybe that meant they would be fed.

One of the guys had a camera and another of them came over to Ian, drawing out a knife.

Ian started to panic again, wondering if they were actually making a snuff video, but then he stuck a finger between Ian's cheek and the gag and used the knife to cut it off.

The second it came free Ian's jaw began to throb painfully again, and he felt as if he could barely move his mouth. He tried to force some saliva up to wet his tongue but everything was so dry. He worked his jaw a few times, trying to ignore how painful it was, but then the man forced his head up so he was looking at the camera.

The camera guy then flicked on some kind of painfully bright light and shined it right on Ian, saying something in Spanish to both of them but Ian didn't catch any of it, though one of the words sounded like "nombre," but Ian couldn't be sure.

"Tell your name," the one who had shoved Ian's chin up a few seconds ago said. "If you have message for family."

Ian just stared at the man blankly, the pain still blooming all around his mouth and head. He was unable to think of anything to say, and he bent his head to try to clear his head and speak normally.

Almost immediately the man got a fistful of Ian's hair and jerked his head back up.

"Say," he said harshly.

"He's hurt," Salty said. "You had that fuckin' rag in his mouth all night."

Ian swallowed hard, wanting to close his eyes.

"Say," the man repeated, ignoring Salty.

Ian scrunched his eyes shut and swallowed again, his tongue swollen and his jaw aching.

"My name is Ian Kinsler," he said hoarsely, squinting away from the brightness of the light. "I've been kidnapped. Get me the fuck out of here."

Then, mercifully, the man who had been yanking his hair turned his attention to Salty.

"You," he said, and Ian let his head drop down again, closing his eyes.

"My name is Jarrod Saltalamacchia. We're still alive but Ian's been roughed up real good so if you could do what you need to do--"

"Just name," the man barked, "and if you have message for family."

Salty cleared his throat. "I don't know how much time they're gonna give me, but Sid, Hunter, Sloanie, I love you and miss you and we'll do everything it takes to get back to you safe and sound. Ash--I'm sorry. Dad, mom, don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. Maybe I'll even make it back for your anniversary next week. Justin--fuck, man, you wouldn't believe the stuff they've got here--can't wait to tell you all about it, and hope Tallon's doin' good--"

"Enough," the man said, cutting Salty off, and the light went out.

If Ian hadn't been feeling so crappy he would've scoffed. Salty sounded like he was dictating a postcard from a beach vacation, not proving his identity and giving possible last messages.

It also made Ian feel guilty that his own message had not been more thoughtful. He should've told Rian and Jack that he loved them and tried to make himself look like he wasn't in so much pain. He didn't want their last sight of their dad to be like this.

Before he could think much longer on this, however, one of the men came over and pried their wedding rings off of their fingers and unclasped their watches. They reached for Salty's necklace but when they pulled it out from beneath his shirt they saw that it was a cross, and they let it drop.

Then they were being forced up again. A couple of men lifted Ian by his armpits and shoved him forward, and he was made to walk out of the shack they were in and toward another one several hundred yards away.

Once they went in Ian's eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness again but he was nevertheless pushed into what looked like a small holding cell with a tiny slit of a window way up high. The put him in, cut the rope off of his wrists, and then slammed the door quickly, a deadbolt sliding into place.

"Salty?" Ian said, turning quickly. "Wait! NO!" He banged on the door. 

"Kins!" he heard Salty say through the door, but the men holding Salty were yelling at him too and Ian could hear their footsteps retreating. 

"You can't do this! You can't--at least keep us together! I need to be able to--fucking--you can't leave me here alone! This isn't--what the fuck do you WANT from me? You want money? Fine, take everything I have! I'll give you my fucking bank account number! Fucking take it, just get me back to Texas, get me the _fuck_ back to Texas and out of this godforsaken motherfucking wasteland--"

He sank to the floor, miserable and defeated and, he realized, completely alone. All he could hear now was some faint yelling that he guessed involved Salty and the other men, the sounds of the jungle around him slowly drowning everything else out.

Ian looked around the small cell. His eyes were slowly adjusting. There was a bucket and a cot with some padding on it, a small blanket heaped at the foot. Otherwise the cell was bare, the concrete floor cracked and the walls streaked with water grime and mold. 

Something moved in the corner, catching his eye, and Ian realized it was a small brown lizard on the wall. 

He shivered, even though it was hot, and tucked his knees up against his chest, leaning his back against the door, trying to make himself okay with the fact that there was nothing he could do now but wait.

*

He didn't have to wait long before someone came to drop off two tin bowls, one with what appeared to be food in it and one with water. Ian waited until the door had been shut to crawl over to the bowls and investigate them.

Though he was extremely hungry and thirsty, he was also extremely suspicious of eating food provided by criminals. What if it was drugged?

There was also the fact that they obviously wanted Ian and Salty to be kept alive so that they could collect a ransom. As he pondered this in depth, Ian began to wonder if this could be used against them.

There weren't any utensils provided, so Ian stuck one grimy finger into the bowl and tentatively put a little bit of it into his mouth.

It didn't taste that bad, really, and it was warm, even. Ian's jaw was aching a lot, however, and as he contemplated the difficulty of eating when every movement of his jaw was painful, a plan slowly began to form in his mind.

Maybe, he thought, he could go on some sort of hunger strike. People did that, right? Gandhi had done it, if Ian remembered his 10th grade world history class correctly. Maybe if he didn't eat at all he could keep himself alive with water just long enough to make the kidnappers realize they wouldn't get anything for him dead, and they'd be forced to abandon this enterprise. Anyway, they'd still have Salty, Ian thought callously, ignoring his twinge of conscience at the thought of leaving Salty here alone. But he couldn't help it if Salty weren't smart enough to formulate daring plans like this.

He drank the water down, but left the food, staring at it and then forcing himself not to think about it. 

This was, of course, far more difficult than he had anticipated.

At first, especially, there was the smell of it. It had been a mistake to take a bite, because with every whiff he got he remembered the way the rice had been smooth and soft and the chicken surprisingly succulent. He remembered the way the juices in the meat had spread around in his mouth and thought of his empty stomach and how full it would be with all of that rice in it.

But he determinedly ignored it, trying to convince himself that this was the only way he could get out.

The food cooled and then sat there, congealed and goopy. But it looked more delicious than it had a few hours ago. Soon a man came back to collect it, but when he saw that it was still sitting there with all the food still in it he smirked at Ian and said something in Spanish, leaving it sitting on the ground as he left.

The minutes ticked by. He knew he had to turn away from the food, forget it was even there. So he went over to the cot, wondering if he could actually lie down on it. The bunched up blanket especially gave him pause, since it was obvious that someone had probably been inhabiting this cell and using it. Ian hoped whoever it was had not been diseased. He left it on the floor, too hot for a blanket anyway, and lay down on the cot, which smelled rank. Soon he fell asleep, emotionally and physically exhausted from the ordeal of the past few hours.

When he woke several hours later he was even more sore and hot and sticky, but he realized with great relief that he didn't feel that acute need to put something in his mouth anymore. He was extremely weak but his stomach felt like pulled taffy, tight and empty. Maybe he could do this. Now that he'd gotten past that initial stage of extreme immediate hunger, maybe he could control the craving and just exist with this feeling of emptiness that didn't even feel urgent, just constant.

He looked up at the slit that served as a window. Maybe it was late in the afternoon, or maybe it was early morning. He had no idea how long he'd been asleep.

For a long time he just lay there, contemplating emptiness, trying to equate it to running a long distance or some other feat of physical endurance that he was more familiar with. Like anything else, he told himself, he just had to train his mind. His body would follow directions as long as he knew how to give them.

He began to lose track of time, dozing and unable to wake himself up but then thrown involuntarily into wakefulness by a lurching feeling in his stomach, and then suddenly, on one of those times when he was jolted awake, he opened his eyes to see that it was completely dark. 

His eyelids still felt heavy but he was fully awake, so he let his eyes close. 

But his mind began to wander. As he lay there on his side, listening to the nighttime insect sounds and marinating in the humid air, he started to be overtaken by a very strange feeling.

It was gradual at first, just a vague sense of unease as he listened to unfamiliar sounds and felt eerily more and more disconnected from his body. There was something unsettling about the atmosphere beyond just the realization that he was thousands of miles from anything he knew, trapped in a cell by criminals and no way to tell when he would be freed, if ever. It was as if he were suddenly beginning to understand the true meaning of time passing for the first time in his life. 

Here he was, in a place so foreign and unfamiliar, no concept of his bearings, his entire existence in question as he lay still and silent on the bed, everything in his life at a standstill, suspended. 

But seconds were ticking by, minutes, hours, and Ian's world being turned upside down made not one iota of difference. He was here, yes, a foreign thing in an exotic place, but his arrival had not disrupted anything in this jungle, and whether he lived or died would make no difference to the trees, the plants, the insects and animals, the sun. Even his family, if they knew by now what had happened to him, would have to carry on with their lives, his kids continuing to grow each second, Rian going back to school, Tess paying the bills and getting her hair done and working with their publicist to make some kind of statement.

The world was going on without him. He thought about his life, about how everything had always been about goals, moving forward, pushing and looking ahead and moving, always moving. He'd never at any point felt like he'd been snatched out of that endless and inexorable forward motion until now, when it seemed like everyone in the world was on a moving sidewalk and he'd been yanked off of it, sequestered off to the side as he helplessly watched everyone else go on.

The thought was suddenly terrifying. What was a life, and what was real? How did most everyone in the world manage to continue living, largely unaware that in the blink of an eye everything could change, that you could be suddenly at the mercy of things far beyond your control? Everything in Ian's life up to now had just been a collection of familiar sensations and feelings, and he felt very small as his mind leapt feverishly between what he knew life to be--baseball stadiums and Dallas and America, his comfortable life of playing a kids' game, and this reality, here and now, so far removed from that, unfamiliar and unrelentingly, callously indifferent.

This sudden onslaught of new and unfamiliar thoughts scared him, perhaps more than the fact of being kidnapped had, and he sat up quickly, wishing very much that he and Salty had been put in the same cell.

He stood and made his way weakly to the door, banging on it.

"Hey!" he said, wanting someone, anyone to answer, even if it meant getting socked in the jaw again with a rifle butt, because then maybe the pain would silence his thoughts.

"HEY! Is anybody out there? I need to talk to someone." No one answered. Ian thought he could hear, very faintly, the sound of talking, but it was a continuous drone, like a radio or television broadcast. "Somebody! I'm serious, I'm like--I'm claustrophobic or something, I need to get out of here. You have to take me out of here. I swear I'll pay anything. I can't sit in here alone."

Still nothing. Ian waited for the sound of footsteps, some break in the static buzz that was beginning to feel like it was filling up his ears, but nothing came.

"Seriously," Ian said, panic building in his chest again, but there was no Salty to calm him now. "I need--I need to get out of here. Please. Just get me out of here and I'll give you anything you want," he cried, banging his fists uselessly against the door.

He kept repeating this, calling and shouting until he was hoarse. It was terrible to really feel for the first time that he was completely helpless. He'd seen other guys say it, of course--baseball was full of guys who were at the mercy of the business, but it was a side of things that he'd been lucky enough never to have to face.

Finally he couldn't shout anymore, weak and exhausted, his mind confused and jumbled with hunger and terror, and he sank back down on the cot, feeling hopeless. He felt the corners of his mouth turn downward involuntarily and then a sob clawing its way up his chest. "This is horseshit," he said, beating weakly at the cot, tears beginning to streak down his face.

He felt very ashamed of himself. Why had he left his family and the comfortable lull of the offseason to come on this stupid trip, anyway? He had no business doing this. His kids had begged him not to go, or to bring them with him, but now he acknowledged that he'd actually been glad for an excuse to leave them behind, what with their constant demands for attention and care getting overwhelming and annoying. He'd felt trapped and inadequate, which he'd been feeling more and more as his kids got older, Tess knowing how to do most everything and impatient when Ian didn't know how, and yet also expecting him to shoulder equal responsibility since he wasn't working in the offseason. He remembered feeling like this was such an unreasonable expectation, since it was his talent, his work, his desirability that was paying for her cushy life of not working and remodeling the house every year and buying whatever she wanted in order to show up her fake friends and participating in stupid competitions with the other wives to prove who was prettiest, whose family was more perfect, whose kids were more adorable.

He would've given anything right now to watch some inane children's TV show for hours on end with Jack or listen to Rian read The Cat in the Hat out loud for the hundredth time to show off. He would've willingly cleaned up twenty bowls of spilled applesauce, and laughed rather than shouted at Rian for taking all of the signed baseball cards he'd carefully collected and preserved as a kid out of their plastic covering and using them to decorate the playhouse in the back yard. He loved his kids, and he'd known on an intellectual level that he should be enjoying every minute with them but the reality had been something else entirely. Now, though, he realized that all the things he valued more than the annoyances and frustrations of spending time with his kids--having a good time, the opinion of his teammates, of the public, not being bothered--were just a symptom of extreme selfishness.

He wiped at his face and leaned forward, combing his fingers through his hair and sitting that way, trying to pull himself together. He could smell himself and his whole mouth felt scummy and disgusting, his hair greasy and his skin and clothes streaked with dirt and blood and vomit and other filth.

That was the first moment that he felt it--like his mind was lurching forward precariously.

Ian froze. Was this a symptom of starving himself? Maybe despite all the sleeping he was still exhausted, since his brain felt like it was working very slowly. He lay back on the cot again, staring at the grimy, dark ceiling, and waited for the dizziness to stop and the spots in his vision to fade.

He dozed off again without realizing it but then woke up with a very painful pang of hunger, but when he tried to move a little, his limbs felt like lead and he could barely lift them. He looked over toward the doorway. How much time had passed since the food had been brought? He had no idea, but he could see another bowl of water there, a new one.

He crawled over, thinking that maybe if he filled his stomach with water he could fool it for a little while and at least have some relief.

He drank the water but it was so hard to swallow, and it sloshed around in his empty stomach unpleasantly, but Ian was able to crawl back to the cot and lift himself up on it.

His mind got more and more confused, filled with memories both real and imagined, and he felt a sense of panic and urgency but a complete inability to move. 

After an incalculable time of trying to calm himself down and ignore his physical discomfort Ian decided that it couldn't be worth it. He was being left to starve, and the kidnappers wouldn't care even if he did. They'd probably just chop his head off and send it back to his wife as some kind of gruesome message. Ian had to eat.

Mustering all the strength he could, he crawled over again to the bowl. It was congealed and there were small puddles of liquid with white spots in them floating on top but Ian was so hungry at this point that he couldn't bring himself to care.

He scarfed it down, knowing that he should be eating slowly but unable to stop himself. It tasted vile and sour but Ian didn't much care, so desperate for food that he ignored it.

It was harder to ignore when he started throwing up. After the first few violent heaves he bit down on something extremely hard and when he reached a finger up into his mouth to take it out he realized it was a tooth, the tooth that had been loosened when he'd been socked in the face.

There was, of course, nothing but the bucket in the room, and it soon got worse, not better, as Ian's stomach rebelled in every possible way against the abuse of the last few days.

As Ian was gradually reduced to the lowest point of his entire life, every last bit of liquid and solid wrung from him in the most excruciating and humiliating ways possible, he acknowledged to himself that maybe he was meant to die, no matter what the means.

By a few hours into it he couldn't move at all and the bucket had long since been deemed useless. The smell would have been nauseating if he hadn't already heaved up what felt like all of his internal organs, and he lay there in his own filth, clammy and cold even in the heat. All he could do was close his eyes, feeling faint and not caring whether anyone came to help him or not. By dawn he was truly delirious, severely dehydrated and cramping all over. At various points he saw his wife, his dad, his high school baseball coach, even his grandfather come into the cell, all of them telling him to look behind the wall.

 _What wall,_ he wanted to shout to them, but he couldn't understand what they were saying to him. Then his hallucinations got very weird, with a giant feral dog, or perhaps a wolf, coming into the cell and staring at him. Ian didn't know whether to be afraid or in awe of it.

These dreams or hallucinations or whatever they were, however, were always interrupted by bouts of extreme agony. He'd always been careful about food, having seen many of his more gluttonous teammates pay the price of undiscriminating voracity, and had thus avoided acute food poisoning for most of his life. But here--not only was he sick, but he was in the worst possible condition to be sick, having sustained extreme shocks to his system, nursing injuries, and being locked in a room that was far from sterile, and stupidest of all, starving himself in some misguided attempt at a protest.

He didn't know how long he lay there, filthy and miserable and wanting very much to die, before he became vaguely aware of being lifted up and dragged out of the cell, the backs of his legs scraping against the ground.

Then someone was stripping his clothes off roughly and he was propped up against a hard tile surface. Whoever it was began to hose him down with cold water that might have felt good in the heat except that he was clammy and shivering with sickness. The spray was hard, too, stinging his skin and making his teeth chatter.

This seemed to go on forever, and he lost consciousness at one point, but then he came to himself again and realized he was lying naked on another cot of some kind and an older man with glasses on was poking his arm with something sharp.

"The fuck?" he said, but it came out garbled, and he could only glare hazily down at his arm, too weak to fling the needle away from himself. He wondered what they were injecting him with, but he couldn't do much about it anyway.

He lay on the cot, his head rolling from side to side occasionally as he tried to make his brain focus.

The room darkened, and then he became aware of sitting up and speaking garbled words very loudly, though he had no memory of what he said or why he had been speaking at all.

He lay back down and then someone was holding his hand and wiping his forehead with a damp rag.

Ian fell back asleep and didn't wake up for many hours.

*

Ian couldn't tell what time of day it was when he woke feeling completely aware of himself for the first time since he'd fallen ill, but as he opened his eyes he saw himself in a room with whitewashed walls. A sliver of sun was shining in through a high window a bit like the one in the cell he'd first been put into, but this room was slightly bigger and much less grimy and disgusting. He looked down at his arm and realized that the needle he'd felt before was connected to a bag that was hanging from the rickety metal bed frame behind him.

He assessed his mental state and decided he didn't feel addled or drugged. Maybe it was just an IV of some kind. Could that be possible?

He turned his head to look around the room and he saw the gigantic form of Salty on the floor a few feet away doing situps. He looked hale and hearty, sweating at his temples a bit and breathing hard, but steadily lurching forward and then leaning back, over and over. He didn't notice Ian staring at him.

"Hey," Ian said groggily, and Salty immediately stopped mid-situp.

"Kins!" he exclaimed, and stood up quickly, coming over to the bedside. "You feelin' better?" He looked Ian over anxiously.

"Where are we?" Ian said thickly, wanting to sit up but feeling too weak to do so.

"They brought you in here with me when they found you and you was so sick," Salty said. "I was afraid you were going to die."

"Apparently not," Ian said. He tried to swallow. "My mouth is really dry. And my head still hurts."

"Maybe they'll get you some water."

"Oh God, no," Ian said hastily, shutting his eyes. "I don't want to put anything in my mouth ever again."

"Poor Kins. Maybe your stomach just ain't used to this stuff. I got a little sick my first time down in the Dominican playing winter ball. But that wasn't anything compared to this. You've been through the wringer."

Ian tried to swallow, feeling weak and tingly all over. "How long has it been?"

"I don't know how long you was sick before they brought you in here," Salty said. He paused. "Maybe we can ask when they bring my coffee." 

"What the fuck?" Ian said, opening his eyes again and squinting up at Salty. "What is this, the Grand Hyatt or something? You've been in here getting room service while I was locked in a prison cell out of the Middle Ages?"

"Were you?" Salty said, sounding shocked.

"Yeah, it was disgusting. And here you've got--" He looked around again. Actually, it wasn't that much different other than being a bit cleaner and having white walls. In fact, the thin, lumpy cot on the other side of the room that Ian presumed was Salty's looked much less appealing even than the rusty bed frame and bare mattress Ian was lying on. "Well, it's just better."

"They won't bring me any dip," Salty said. "For the first couple of days that had me pretty grouchy, let me tell you."

Ian closed his eyes, annoyed.

"Do you want some coffee?" Salty said.

"No, my stomach's been through enough," Ian said, reaching down to rest his hand on it gingerly.

"Oh. I just thought--my head stopped hurting right after I drank some, so I thought it might help for you, too. It's good here."

"I don't see why it would help. I'm not addicted to caffeine," Ian said.

"Oh," Salty said again. "Well they just brought it 'cause I was gettin' real antsy without any dip or coffee or nothin' and I asked for it and they brought some."

Silence descended, and Ian tried to relax the muscles in his forehead, which he could feel was furrowed. Even this little bit of talking was exhausting.

"I wonder why they brought me in here," he said after a while.

"I don't know," Salty said, "but seein' all the stuff they did to take care of you--it made me feel better. They definitely want us alive. They even had a doctor of some kind in here."

"Is he the one who put this in my arm?" Ian said, gesturing down at his arm.

"Yeah." Salty cleared his throat a little. "You were scaring me, Kins. You kept saying stuff and none of it made any sense. I've never seen anyone that bad."

"It wasn't exactly a walk in the park for me, either," Ian said.

"I know, I just meant--" Salty cut himself off. "I'm real glad you're feeling better. And I'm glad they brought you in here."

"Maybe they stuck me in the crappy cell because I tried to run away before," Ian said.

Salty didn't answer, and Ian looked over at him. He was frowning slightly.

"How many days have we been here?" Ian said.

"I can't be sure," Salty was saying, "but by my count, it's been about five days since we were in that car on our way to the school," Salty said. "But I don't know how long we was in that container. Could've been longer."

"Five days and they still haven't coughed up the money to get us out of here?" Ian said, raising one hand to his forehead. His arms were still a little shaky, he noted, and quickly put it back down on the bed. "What are they waiting for?"

"Well," Salty said, lowering his voice a little and eyeing the door, "it's probably not that simple. They don't just wanna hand a bunch of money over and let them get away with this. I'm sure they wanna arrest these guys if they can. We just have to keep our heads down and, you know. Stay positive."

"Stay positive?" Ian said, starting to get annoyed again. "I almost fucking died."

"But you didn't," Salty said simply. "And look, now we're together again."

Even though just a few minutes ago he had been so relieved to see Salty, for some reason hearing Salty express the same relief and even gladness about having been reunited made Ian feel like it was a disgusting, weak sentiment unworthy of them as men.

"You're a fucking joke," he said harshly. "I don't care if we're together or not. You can sit there and be positive or whatever the fuck makes you feel better but I refuse to pretend this is anything but a colossally shitty situation."

This was greeted with silence. Ian was staring at the ceiling, and in the periphery of his vision he could see Salty standing beside the bed, still as a statue, but Ian couldn't bring himself to look directly at him.

Salty stood there for what felt like an eternity, and then he moved away, sitting down on the ground again to resume his sit-ups.

It didn't take long for Ian to regret his words, especially when he realized that, despite the silence in their shared cell, even the sound of Salty's breathing was enough to keep the terrifying feelings of detachment and desolation that he'd felt before, when he'd been on his own, at bay.

*

Ian did nothing much over the next few days but lie there on the bed. At one point the guy who must've been the doctor came back and took the IV out of his arm, and for every meal Ian was given a thin gruel and some kind of sweet and salty soft drink that came in a colorful plastic bottle.

Salty, on the other hand, was brought food that, Ian had to admit, looked pretty tasty. There were arepas and empanadas and pabellón criollo and even fried plantains, all heaped high on his plate and usually delivered with some laughter and joking, because that was how Salty received them, exuberantly trying to learn the names of the food and always thanking whoever delivered it--usually a man named Luis--with copious hand gestures and broken phrases of both Spanish and English. Salty learned from Luis that this was the same food the men in the compound were eating.

Ian's own food was delivered in silence and without any acknowledgment on either side. Ian knew he needed Salty's help if he ever wanted to eat anything appetizing again; he needed the rapport Salty had built up with their kidnappers to even communicate with them, but since Ian had snapped at Salty they hadn't spoken one word to each other. His appetite had never been strong at the best of times and he ate mostly to keep himself strong and bulk up, but eating was mostly a chore for him, which was a big part of the reason he'd stupidly thought it would be relatively easy to starve himself just enough to make a statement. Now, even after the starvation ordeal, it was no different; he might have been more motivated to eat had he been given the same food as Salty got, but because of the silence between them and Ian's dispositional lack of appetite, Ian felt that forcing himself to eat heavier food was only going to make him suffer more, and his kidnappers seemed wary of giving him anything to eat that would be remotely indigestible.

Ian was both resentful of Salty's easy camaraderie with their kidnappers and in awe of it. He knew it wasn't any sort of Stockholm Syndrome; it was just Salty's way, to always find the means to be ridiculously happy with even the crappiest situations. As he watched Salty happily humming in the morning and standing up on his bed to try to see out the window, or saw him give Luis hugs for delivering his meals, or furtively watched him earnestly reading the Bible he'd asked for, Ian couldn't decide whether Salty had been lucky enough to hit on the meaning of life or if he was just really fucking dumb.

After Ian had snapped at him, Salty seemed to have decided that keeping himself happy meant not talking to Ian, and Ian tried to tell himself that he was fine with that. There was something about Salty that had always made him feel deeply uncomfortable, and being in such close quarters with him now accentuated this feeling, since there was nowhere Ian could go to shrug it off or ignore it. Nothing Salty did was unlikable or aggravating per se, but Ian was nevertheless constantly annoyed by his attitude, his approach to everything, and even his very presence, which seemed large without being impressive, just filling everything up in a suffocating way that made Ian want to quash him. Each time he succeeded in doing this, however, he felt guilty and remorseful, and then he began to resent the fact that he felt guilty about it, which led back to being annoyed by Salty himself, who continued to exist, blissfully unaware of Ian's cycle of annoyance and shame.

Feeling weak and hopeless and aggravated by his cellmate's every movement, sound, and action, Ian spent hours lying on his bed, turned toward the wall, wearing nothing but his underwear because of how hot it was. He stared blankly at it, thinking of his kids, his parents, his life, and trying to ignore whatever it was that Salty was doing. He got up only to get his tray of uninspiring food and to use the bucket in the corner when he had to do his business. Luckily spending most of their lives in locker rooms meant they both had very little in the way of embarrassment about that aspect of it. The smell was something else but Salty was pretty good about calling for someone to empty the bucket after one of them had been using it, and Ian was grateful for that, at least.

But otherwise there wasn't much to get up for, and Ian, who had always felt full of energy and needed to move constantly, suddenly found himself in a perpetual state of torpor and apathy. A whole day passed without either of them talking to each other, and then another. Several times Ian almost turned around and yelled at Salty to stop his goddamned _humming_ , just to have something to say, but what was the point? Silence would not have been any better. In the shame part of his cycle he thought about trying to start a normal conversation and getting back to a place where they could at least joke about stuff and he could maybe convince Salty to share his food, but then he looked around and saw Salty standing with his face raised toward the window, hands behind his back, shifting from foot to foot, back and forth. He couldn't be still and his hair was insanely long and he was taking up too much space in the tiny cell and Ian could literally smell him. So he scoffed audibly and turned back toward the wall, leaving Salty to his state of big, stupid inanity.

Without Salty talking to him, of course, Ian gradually began to revert again to the depressing thoughts he'd begun to have in the cell on his own, before he'd been sick. 

He spent a lot of his time regretting things, contemplating the mistakes he might've made, mistakes that he was too busy to contemplate before. Not having ever spent much time on self-reflection was something he'd always been proud of up to now, since he'd seen how poisonous that could be for other guys. In fact, his ability to never look back and never stew about things, never think too hard about anything or anyone was what had made him a success. Here, though, there was nothing to do but pace around the cell and read the stupid Bible that Salty had asked for, which Ian refused to do, so he was trapped inside his own head for the first time in his life.

His thoughts turned often toward his marriage and his relationship with Tess, something he had deliberately avoided thinking about before, despite his growing indifference toward her. But being here and missing his life did not necessarily mean he missed her, he realized. He began to wonder what it was about her that he'd loved in the first place. Marriage had been her idea, really, even though Ian had done the proposing. It was something that people did, and she had been as good a choice as anyone. He remembered enjoying sex with her in the beginning; she'd been the first person to touch his dick, a handjob in the back of her parents' Ford Taurus, which she'd borrowed to drive Ian to a movie when they were in high school. He supposed he loved her for that.

What he'd really loved, though, was how much other guys envied him because she loved him. He knew she was hot, but seeing her nearly every day made that essentially meaningless to him except when his teammates or other people he admired and looked up to commented on how attractive she was. He liked the idea that she was his, that other men had to respect him for the fact that she had chosen him. Back when he still lurked on messageboards on the Internet, trowling around for mentions of himself, he remembered feeling a glimmer of triumph when some self-important couch potato idiot living in his mom's basement hated Ian as a baseball player but then went on to express a burning desire to fuck Ian's wife. _Go ahead and say what you want about me,_ he would think, _but there's a reason women like Tess want me and would never fucking touch you._ Because they wanted Ian, wanted his fame and his money and his importance and what he could give them, and it didn't matter to most of them that Ian didn't really give a fuck about wanting them in return.

Now, of course, that seemed meaningless, too. What did the envy of his teammates and other men matter? It did him no good here. It wasn't even something that made him want to sit up in this terrible lice-ridden bed. All of it felt empty and trivial, not even worth going back to. He tried to think of one thing he missed about her, one thing that justified the fact that she was such an integral part of his existence--the keeper of his home, the beneficiary of his wealth, the mother of his children, the person whom everyone believed he loved and valued. He couldn't think of anything he really even liked about her but the fact that she was efficient and responsible and convenient and familiar. What did that even count for? Why had he had kids with this person who meant nothing to him except as a trophy for other men to covet?

The thought was disturbing. He was caged, here, but the more he thought about it the more he felt as if his whole life was a cage, and he'd just had his head stuck too far out from between two of the bars to realize it. There was always so much urgency and anticipation in him before, but now, with nothing to do but wait, there was no urgency and nothing to look forward to, and Ian felt completely lost to a growing sense that he didn't know who he was.

He was losing weight pretty rapidly and by the third day after he'd been brought into Salty's cell it was noticeable, his stomach going slightly concave when he was lying on his back. He hadn't shaved since the kidnapping, his beard now longer than it had ever been, and he hadn't been allowed to shower. His scalp itched really badly and he was pretty sure he had lice since he had seen something like one on the mattress where his head rested.

Despite all of this, however, he began waking up hard every morning and sometimes in the middle of the day. He couldn't really understand it since he didn't feel like jerking off at all. He'd always had a problem with unwanted erections. The problem had lessened but never really gone away after adolescence, but surely here, in these disgusting circumstances, his body could cooperate a little. But no, it continued to divert all its resources and energy to his groin and several times Ian had to roll over onto his stomach to try to hide it. If Salty was asleep Ian would try to jack off quietly into the mattress but if Salty was awake Ian would just close his eyes and try to will it away, which often look a long time, especially when he couldn't focus because all he could think about was Salty's proximity and annoying tendency to be moving around everywhere in the cell instead of just sitting still, being quiet, facing the other way, and giving them both some privacy.

It was on the fifth night that Ian started out of a light doze and heard the unmistakable sound of Salty beating off.

He couldn't help it; he had to turn his head and look over at Salty's dim form on the other bed. It was too dark to see anything very clearly but he could make out the hulking shape of him and see the surprisingly slow and steady movement of his hand.

Ian had beat off with other guys in middle school a couple of times and when he'd had roommates in the minors he'd walked in on some stuff, but it had been a long time since he'd actually witnessed someone masturbating and for some reason it was far more disturbing now than it ever had been before. He wondered whether he should just sit up and tell Salty to stop it, but he was frozen, mesmerized, horrified at how loud the repetitive rustling seemed in their small space, the fact that Salty was just blatantly lying there on his back with his dick sticking straight up and his hand wrapped around it.

And then Ian started to get hard, too. It was stiflingly hot in the cell already but his face felt flushed and he couldn't stop thinking about what Salty's dick looked like and how it must've felt for him to be as relaxed about seeking his release as he evidently was when Ian himself tried so hard to stifle himself. Ian wanted to push his underwear down and do the same thing, let his knees tip open and close his eyes and just fucking go for it, uncaring about whether or not Salty could see or hear him, and the more he tried not to think about doing just this the more he couldn't help himself.

Soon he was rock hard and almost aching and yet he was petrified, and all he could do was listen to Salty, who inhaled sharply, making a kind of snuffling noise that should have been disgusting but instead made Ian's dick twitch, sending a weird sensation that felt like a shiver all through his body.

The feeling was enough to jerk Ian out of his paralyzed stupor, and he quickly turned around on the bed so that his back was to Salty.

He lay there, his heart beating fast, and heard Salty shift a little on his cot, and then settle in to sleep. He must've come. Meanwhile, Ian was staring at the wall, flushed and uncomfortable and terribly hard, wondering why on earth hearing Salty beating off had put him in such a state. It must've been a combination of the boredom, the stress, the depression, the crowdedness--something wasn't right. Everything about what he'd heard and seen disgusted Ian: Salty's shamelessness, his lack of consideration. Ian couldn't stop trying to picture what Salty's face must've looked like as he was doing it, if he'd been concentrating, careless, relaxed, or biting his lip with the effort of it, and it invoked a strong feeling of what felt like revulsion in Ian, but still he was so hard and he just wanted to touch himself and come.

He wouldn't let himself, though, unwilling to give in because of what it might've meant that he got worked up listening to another guy beat off, and not just another guy but _Salty_. Ian tossed and turned, unable to get back to sleep for a long time.

What was wrong with him? Something was. He felt like he wasn't in control of his own mind. He couldn't stop the spiral of depression and self-loathing, was having extreme doubts about his life choices for the first time, and now he was having weird sexual responses to things that had no sexual appeal whatsoever.

It wasn't until after he began to see light coming in through the window above that he dozed off into a fitful sleep, and then, of course, he dreamed about Salty.

The dream was terrifyingly vivid, and again Ian was paralyzed on the bed as Salty loomed over him, smiling in that idiotic way he had as he reached down and wrapped his large hand over Ian's dick. It felt so good, so achingly, terribly good, and in his dream Ian spread his thighs apart and lay himself open to Salty, staring up at him in equal parts fear and desire, yearning for more pressure, more heat, more anything from Salty's hands, and then he came, twisting violently and moaning.

It was realizing that his vocal chords were actually making noise that caused Ian to snap into wakefulness, and he sat up quickly, his heart beating fast and his forehead sweaty. He looked down and realized he'd come in his pants, and he looked over at the other bed.

Salty was asleep, one arm flung behind his head, his eyes closed and his breathing steady.

Ian curled up, huddling with his knees close to his chest and rocking a little bit. This place was making him crazy, and he had no idea what to do.

*

Later that day a couple of men Ian hadn't seen before came in and shouted some things at them until they stood up, and then they handcuffed both of them behind their backs and led them out of the cell and down a dark hallway, and then they were outside. It was bright and hot and Ian had to squint against the light, but they were herded over to what appeared to be an outdoor communal shower. One of the men was holding a giant rifle and stood off to the side smoking while the other one uncuffed them and turned the spray on. He gestured and shouted at them until they realized they were supposed to get naked.

All Ian was wearing anyway was his dirty underwear. It must've been washed during his bout of food poisoning but not since then, and by this point it was pretty stiff and disgusting. Just the same, he was very reluctant to take it off, especially when he saw Salty readily shed his t-shirt and boxer briefs, leaving him naked but for the giant gold crucifix he wore on a big yellow guido chain around his neck.

There was a single bar of soap in a scummy tray in one corner of the stall, and as the water turned on Salty reached for it, beginning to soap himself up.

One of the men was saying something to Ian harshly, so Ian reluctantly reached down to step out of his underwear. He hung it carefully on one of the posts that comprised the stall walls and then huddled in the corner, watching as Salty reached his arms up to scrub under them.

They'd showered together in the locker room before, but never just the two of them alone, and of course not just after Ian had had a very vivid wet dream about Salty. He tried not to look but he couldn't help it. Salty's arms and chest were covered in tattoos but Ian wasn't much interested in those, having seen them many times before.

What he couldn't help looking at was Salty's thighs and his ass, both of which were massive, even for an athlete. Ian himself had chicken legs and no amount of working out seemed to make a bit of difference.

He tried to work out what he was feeling as he looked Salty over furtively. It certainly wasn't admiration. If the dream had really meant something, wouldn't he look at Salty now and feel attraction? It was definitely not attraction that he was experiencing, but it was something unsettling, a coil of something that skated the line between revulsion and fascination.

"D'you want the soap?" Salty said suddenly, turning toward Ian.

Ian stared for a moment at Salty's very impressive dick, which was resting placidly against his soapy pubes, and then forced himself to look up at Salty's face.

"Oh," he heard himself say, "you're talking to me now?"

Salty was still holding the soap out. "Thought you didn't want me talking to you," he said. "But I figured if you were gonna stare at my naked ass we should be on speaking terms."

Ian frowned and swiped the soap from Salty, marching over under the shower head and beginning to scrub himself up, replacing the cake of soap when he was done and turning the shower on again.

As he stood under the spray, which was cold but not unpleasant, he closed his eyes and tried to let himself forget about where he was and who was watching and just enjoy the act of becoming clean, washing all the sweat and grime away from him. It was easier out here in the open to breathe, he thought, to feel the space and not be suffocated by Salty's overwhelming presence and all the dark, depressing thoughts that were weighing him down.

When he was done he opened his eyes and saw Salty wringing out clothes and realized that Salty had washed out not only his own t-shirt and underwear but Ian's, too.

There was something unnerving about that. Ian supposed he should've been past the point of any self-consciousness, since basically they had been seeing, hearing, and smelling each other perform all manner of bodily functions in very close quarters for days now, but the fact that Salty had done this tiny bit of housekeeping for him felt shocking and almost invasive.

"Did you seriously just--wash my underwear?" he said, standing there buck naked and staring at Salty.

"Yeah. Here," Salty said, holding the wet underwear out to him. "I guess it'll dry out soon."

Ian took it, shaking it out and turning away from Salty to put it on.

Once they were back in the cell, which seemed even smaller than it had before they left, Ian sat down on the bed and sighed.

"You've gotten really thin," Salty said, sitting down on his bed across from Ian.

"Yeah, well, I haven't had much appetite."

"I can count every one of your ribs," Salty said.

"So what," Ian said dully. "At least I have all mine, unlike you, right?"

Salty did not laugh at this anemic joke, and the silence stretched out.

"You've gotta try to stay healthy," Salty said finally. "I been watchin' you, and you're--you're wasting away or something. That's not right."

Ian looked up at him. His face was so fucking _dumb_ , Ian thought savagely. He had big cow eyes with stupid girly eyelashes and a bulbous nose and ridiculous hair. And his beard, it didn't even connect to his mustache so there was just hair sitting there on his upper lip like a fat hairy caterpillar or something. Ugh, he was so annoying, and he'd sit there repeating generic maxims about health and well-being like he _knew_ , when he _didn't_.

 _What is it about you that makes me so fucking insanely angry?_ Ian wanted to shout at him. But he didn't really have the energy.

"Well what am I gonna do about it? We're trapped here and all I can do is eat what they give me."

"You can eat some of mine," Salty offered. "It's actually pretty good. Someone here is a good cook. I was never a big fan of Mexican but it tastes different here."

"Maybe that's because it's not Mexican, it's Venezuelan," Ian retorted. "Assuming we're still in Venezuela, I guess."

For some reason this made Salty smile widely, and Ian felt perversely outraged by the sight.

"I'm glad you're talkin' again," he said inexplicably.

"You're so weird," Ian moaned, leaning back on the bed and covering his face with his hands.

"That's what people tell me," he heard Salty say.

Ian raised his head again, shifting his arms up so he could rest back on his elbows.

"Then why don't you try to act a little more normal or something?"

"I have," Salty said. "Didn't work. I've never been normal. Never have been, never will be."

"I don't even know what it is about you," Ian said. "I mean it's like--the way you fucking _look_ at me, even."

"How do I look at you?" Salty said.

"I don't know, that's what I'm saying," Ian said. "It's like--like you're just waiting for someone to come punch you in the face and you're so sorry for them just the same."

Salty laughed. "Well, I don't know nothin' about that, but if someone came at me I wouldn't just stand there feelin' sorry for him."

Ian couldn't help himself. "So why didn't you fight back when they were trying to put us in that van?"

Salty's smile faded.

"Is that why you've been mad at me?" he said after a moment.

Ian just stared at him, not answering.

"The security guys at that orientation thing told us not to if anything happened," Salty said slowly. "They said trying to escape or whatever would only make things worse for us. That's why I didn't."

"But you can't just fucking accept it!" Ian said, sitting up quickly. "You can't just--look at what they've done to us. We're shitting in a bucket. A _bucket_. We have lice and who knows what else, I'm covered in bug bites and we'll probably get malaria or something, and I almost died from the food poisoning and you just--you just washed my fucking underpants."

"Hey," Salty said quietly. "We're alive. And when they pulled those guns on you when you tried to get away--I wasn't sure we were gonna be. And then they shot that guy right in front of us and--and then again when they brought you in here that day and you looked like you was dead. You were white as a sheet your skin was all waxy and I didn't know whether we'd make it out of here alive together."

Ian frowned.

"I just figure," Salty continued, "as long as we're alive and we're together things ain't so bad."

Ian knew deep down he felt the same way, and that even being trapped in here with Salty, annoyances and all, was far more bearable than those few hours or days when he'd been by himself.

"So," he said after a while, avoiding Salty's eyes, "what if we're kept here for years?"

"I guess we'll have to find a way to pass the time," Salty said, sounding so flippant about it that Ian was instantly annoyed with him again.

"Aren't you even--the least bit afraid that our lives will end with this?" he said. "Even if we do make it out alive--we could be done, our careers could be over by the time they release us."

Salty regarded Ian for a moment but just then a bird started chirping outside the window. Distracted, Salty stood up and stepped up onto the bed to try to look for it.

Ian had heard bird sounds quite frequently but rarely were they so close. It was likely resting on a branch nearby.

"I can't see it, but it's gotta be close," Salty said. He kept looking out of the window, listening to the sound of its call.

"You know," he said, turning around to look at Ian briefly, "you used to remind me of a bird sometimes."

"What?" Ian said, bemused.

"When you'd do that thing where you flapped your arms out, and your thin little legs in those high socks. I'd see you out there across the field and you looked just like a bird, beaky nose and all."

"What the fuck," Ian said, taken aback. "I'm not like a bird. If I'm a bird you're a--" He tried to think of something that Salty resembled. "I don't know, a big stupid dog. My aunt and uncle had one just like you. It was always jumping up on everyone and slobbering all over everything."

"I didn't mean nothing by it," Salty said quietly, turning back to the window.

Ian felt bad, then. He lay back down on the mattress and tried to soothe his conscience.

Soon it must've been dinner time and Ian heard the familiar sound of the deadlock in the metal door being unbolted.

Salty turned quickly and moved toward the door. _Just like a dog at mealtime,_ Ian thought defensively, and there was Luis, a wiry man with sideburns shaved into sharp points and a gun that looked about as thick as his torso slung around his back.

Ian listened to their familiar conversation about the food. Luis seemed to like Salty, smiling and laughing at Salty's terrible Spanish before setting Ian's meal down carelessly on the floor next to Ian's bed and then leaving.

Ian didn't even feel like eating. Not for the first time, he just left the bowl where it was on the floor and stared at the ceiling.

This time, however, Salty, after eating a few bites, swallowed and lowered the plate.

"Do you want some of mine?" he said, gesturing down at it.

It did smell pretty good, Ian noted. "It'll probably make me sick again," he said.

"I don't think so. It's all cooked."

Ian turned his head to look at Salty, who had a piece of rice stuck in his beard.

Looking at Salty's stupid face, which resembled that of a toddler offering to share his cheerios, Ian couldn't help making a sound of intense frustration and pain.

"I don't know what that means," Salty said.

Ian sat up. "Fine," he said.

"Fine, you want some?" Salty said.

"Yes," Ian said. "I'll have some, I guess."

Salty grinned and stood up, coming over to Ian's bed and plopping down next to him, making the rusty springs under it squeak.

"Here," he said, and God, he was so fucking big, Ian thought resentfully, overwhelmed with Salty's heat and size being right next to him. "Since we don't get forks you kinda have to scoop up the rice and beans with this thing--I don't remember what he called it, but it tastes kinda like a cross between a tortilla and bread." He began to demonstrate for Ian.

"I think I know how to eat," Ian said.

"Okay," Salty said placidly, apparently immune to Ian's sarcasm. "Take as much as you want."

Feeling very long-suffering, Ian reached over to take some, and they sat there together, silent but for the sound of their chewing, eating side by side off of the same plate.

*

That night Ian was lying on the bed, wide awake and listening to jungle sounds. Salty had fallen asleep about an hour before, but Ian, who had spent most of the last few days dozing, suddenly found that he could not sleep anymore.

He kept thinking about the dream that had woken him up that morning. Even now, many hours later, just the memory of it was powerful enough to make Ian's face start to get hot.

Why was this affecting him so much? If anything, looking at Salty embarrassed him. There was something about him, some rawness, an unprotected nakedness about his whole personality that seemed to show through everything and accentuate all of Salty weirdly. No other guy in the world made Ian feel this way, this sense of reluctant pity and anger about the fact that Salty couldn't do a better job of protecting himself from people's judgement and cruelty.

Not that Salty was not capable of protecting himself. In fact, his size made it so that he didn't have to, since even the guys who had things to say about him weren't going to try to get into it with a guy who was as intimidating physically as Salty was. But there was something about Salty that seemed defenseless just the same, desperate for respect and a sense of fraternity from other guys but never quite on the inside the way others were, the way Ian himself found it so easy to be. Ian was at a loss to figure out why he cared.

Of course, this made imagining sex with Salty all the more awkward. Why had his brain gone there? It had to be the loneliness, the isolation. They were so crowded in here; it was inevitable that the only person he saw in waking life was the person who would appear in his dreams, too.

He started going over the dream again involuntarily. As with all dreams, the memory of sensation was strongest, and as he lay there remembering how unexpected and strangely exciting it had been to be faced with someone bigger and stronger resting the entirety of his weight on top of him, he felt himself starting to get hard again.

Immediately revolted, he tried to banish the memory, but it wouldn't go away, and his mind's eye was overtaken with the memory of what Salty's face had looked like above him, the way he'd been smiling in Ian's dream, just like the way he'd smiled when Ian agreed to share his food. It was inescapable, the memory of how hot and urgent and invasive everything had felt, how incredibly, undeniably arousing it had been.

Ian turned his head, tortured and confused by having discovered that this, of all things, had him more worked up than he could remember being in years. He looked over at Salty, who was blissfully unaware of Ian's sick, trauma-induced fantasy as he continued to sleep soundly.

There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance. _Fuck it,_ Ian thought, and reached down into his pants to get himself off.

He could tell immediately after he started that it wasn't going to take long. Within a few seconds he had brought himself up to the edge, the disconcerting mix of revulsion and fascination heightening every sensation. He scrunched his eyes and just gave into it, just let himself think of Salty's face, the strangeness of it making it even more disturbingly arousing.

Just as he was careening toward orgasm he made the mistake of turning his head back again to take one more look at Salty to see the real thing, as if he could decide in that final moment whether the reality of fantasizing about not only a man but _Salty_ was really the tipping point, and just as he did a flash of lightning illuminated the cell for a split second and Ian saw Salty's eyes, open and awake, regarding him.

"F-fuck," Ian stuttered involuntarily as he came, so hard, creaming his hand and his underwear, the feeling of his orgasm spreading through his entire body and forcing him to keep looking at Salty because he was the reason for all of it and Ian couldn't abort it, was too far gone to do anything but let it all come.

He was out of breath and humiliated and still couldn't fucking believe that he'd just consciously masturbated to the idea of Salty on top of him, _and Salty had seen him do it._

Ian brought his left hand up to cover his face, his knees falling back down onto the dirty mattress, and he waited for Salty to say something--something hateful or mocking or disgusted or merely to make some kind of joke about the fact that Ian had shot his load while looking into Salty's eyes.

But it was dark, and Salty was quiet, and after a few moments of his heart beating wildly and his limbs being frozen in place, Ian got the courage to look over at Salty again.

It was too dark to see, of course, but Salty was still and silent.

Ian tried to convince himself that Salty had been asleep all along and that it had all been Ian's imagination. He fell asleep listening to thunder rumbling in the distance.

*

It was raining heavily when Ian woke up. He felt sticky and itchy all over, his skin and scalp crawling, probably with lice, his growing beard irritating his face, and the humidity so heavy that breathing felt difficult. His mouth felt so scummy and disgusting, and Ian reflected for the thousandth time that he never would've thought he'd miss brushing his teeth. As he rolled over, groaning, he thought longingly of the dry heat of north Texas and Arizona. The misery of standing on the baseball diamond in 120 degree weather was nothing compared to this.

He slowly became aware of the sounds of Salty doing his morning exercises, the sit-ups and push-ups and various stretches that he did every day. He could go at this for a long time, Ian knew, and mostly Ian tried to just sleep through them, annoyed at Salty's apparent immunity to the depressing nature of their situation and his ability to get up every morning as if it were just another morning, as if they hadn't been caged like zoo animals.

But this morning, the events of the previous day--and the middle of the night--prevented him from being able to doze off again.

So he lay there listening to Salty's breathing and slight grunting noises. But this wasn't safe either, apparently, as it made Ian think of sex. Again.

The boredom must've really been getting to him. He sat up abruptly, forcing himself to turn around.

"Hey," he said, and then he noticed that Salty, for once, was doing his exercises without his t-shirt on. Ian was immediately mesmerized by the play of Salty's shoulder and back muscles as he continued doing push-ups, and the way the cross on his necklace kept dragging on the ground.

"Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight," Salty was saying, and then he got up to fifty before finally pushing himself all the way up so he was standing, towering over Ian on the bed.

"Mornin'," he said, grinning down at Ian.

Ian felt his stomach do a funny flip as he stared up at Salty. Then he collected himself.

"Hey, do you think you could use your special bromance with Luis to, like, get us a toothbrush and some toothpaste?"

Salty blinked. "Oh," he said, "I guess I can try." He paused for a second. "We don't have a bromance, though."

"Whatever, that guy loves you," Ian said. "He'd give you anything you wanted."

"You jealous?" Salty said.

"What?" Ian sputtered. "He can have you, I don't care."

Salty gave him a strange look and then laughed a little. "I just meant--well, doesn't matter. It was a joke anyway."

Ian realized belatedly that Salty had been implying that Ian would be jealous of Salty having Luis' attention and not the other way around. He cursed himself silently. This was becoming a joke.

"Well," he continued hurriedly, "while you're at it you might ask if he can get a razor for us."

"You wanna shave?" Salty said.

"Heck yes. I don't know how you can stand having a beard. Even grosser when there's probably lice in it."

"You think you have lice?" Salty said, eyes widening a little.

"Don't you?" Ian said defensively.

"Lemme look," Salty said, stepping toward Ian and leaning in.

Ian realized he was holding his breath as Salty bent forward and took hold of Ian's jaw with his left hand, tilting Ian's head to the side and running the index finger on his right hand through the longish stubble along Ian's cheek.

"I don't see anything," Salty said, lowering his finger but still holding onto Ian's jaw and looking down at him. "You're probably imagining it. It feels real funny to go so long without a shower, but I think I got used to it goin' on camping trips with my brother and cousins."

"I've been camping before," Ian said, again feeling defensive. "It never felt this gross."

"Well, I'll try to ask about it. Although I don't know the word for razor or toothbrush."

Still he had not let go of Ian's face. Ian swallowed, trying to act like this was normal. "Did you take Spanish in school or something?" he asked.

"No, just tried to teach myself some so I could talk to my Latin pitchers."

Ian would've rolled his eyes at Salty's habit of using possessive pronouns when it came to pitching staff, but he was being held still, not only by Salty's hand but by his eyes.

Finally, after an eternal moment, Salty lowered his hand, and Ian exhaled, clambering off the bed and walking, a bit unsteadily, over to the bucket in the corner. Apparently Salty had already used the facilities this morning, and Ian tried to stand as far back as he could and still aim his stream into it.

"Hey, you wanna stretch with me?" Salty said while Ian was still in the middle of peeing.

"Aren't you done already?" Ian said, shaking himself out and tucking back in. "I thought this is when you start reading your Bible for the next four hours."

"Well, that can wait," Salty said. "I'll do some more if you'll do it with me. You can't be out of shape when we do get out of here. It could be tomorrow or next week. We still gotta try to do as much of a workout as we can so that getting back into it won't be so hard."

Ian knew intellectually this was a good attitude to take on; as it was he thought he could feel his own muscles atrophying and his joints stiffening. But there was something about Salty's optimism about their situation that continued to grate on Ian and he decided to confront Salty about it.

"Seriously, man," he said, turning around. "Why do you even bother?"

Salty cocked his head to the side. "Why do I bother exercising?"

"Well--not just that, but like...how can you honestly sit in here and still feel motivated to do anything?"

Salty shrugged, frowning a little. "What's the alternative? Lying on that dirty mattress day and night like you've been doing?"

Ian couldn't explain it, but what he'd been doing almost felt like some kind of protest, the only way he could fight back, especially since the hunger strike had gone so horribly wrong. "I know how it looks," he said, "but when they've locked us in here like this--it's like they're using our lives against us."

"Okay," Salty said. And then he paused. "I'm not sure I understand."

"It's like--if you're just in here running around in circles--the only reason it means anything to them is if you care. You care about getting out, you care about your life. If you don't care then it doesn't mean anything that they've locked you up."

"Well, that's just stupid," Salty said flatly. "That's like cutting off your nose to spite your face."

"Forget it," Ian said. "I knew you wouldn't understand."

He brushed past Salty to go back to his mattress but Salty grabbed his arm, forcing him to turn back around and face him.

"Ian," Salty said.

Ian stared up Salty silently.

"Don't let this mess you up for good," Salty said. "Something was different about you after they brought you here when you'd been sick. It's dangerous."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ian said.

Salty then grabbed both of Ian's biceps in his hands, his rough, callused hands scratching the softer skin there.

"Please, Ian," Salty said, and his eyes looked almost afraid.

It was exactly the same tone of voice he'd used when he'd said those same words before, after they'd seen the other man killed and Ian had been throwing up uncontrollably with the gag in his mouth.

The memory made Ian angry again. He wanted to shrug Salty off. "Jesus, how is what I'm doing any different from what you did--or didn't do--when they first took us? You just gave up without any fight at all. And maybe you were right, because a fight is what they want, they want to be able to beat us down and sell us back to our families because they were more powerful and outsmarted us."

"You don't sound like the Kins that I knew," Salty said, and he looked genuinely disappointed.

"The fuck does that mean?" Ian said.

"I'm just remembering--all those times you'd get up in the locker room and try to say something to get us all fired up, so we wouldn't just say fuck it and give up. And when I was coming back from surgery and you told me--"

"That's baseball," Ian said, cutting Salty off. "It was just a fucking game. This isn't a game, this is real. These people are real, and they could kill us any time just because they fucking feel like it."

"That's exactly why you can't think about it that way. If they could kill us you can't kill yourself just so they don't have the satisfaction."

Ian did shrug Salty off, then, wrenching his arms out of Salty's grip and cursing the fact that he couldn't get any further away from him than across the cell.

"It's different for you," he said bitterly.

"How's it different?" Salty said.

"You obviously have no reason to use all the fucking time we have here to doubt any of your choices in life." Ian let himself fall face first down on the mattress before remembering that the mattress smelled slightly sour and putrid and was crawling with vermin. He turned around quickly.

"What do you mean?" Salty said.

"I mean I've started wondering what I even have to go back for. Who would even care if I never did come back."

"What?" Salty said.

Ian flung his arm up over his eyes. "I don't even--I don't care."

"What do you mean you don't care?" Salty said.

"Are you fucking deaf?" Ian said. "I don't know how I can be any more clear. I. Don't. _Care._ "

"But--I don't understand," Salty said slowly.

Ian lay there for a few moments listening to the rain, which was still steadily falling on the metal roof above them. There was a leak in the corner and water was dripping in.

"I mean," Ian said finally, "that I feel like I have nothing to look forward to."

A short silence ensued, and then when Salty spoke his voice was harder than anything Ian had ever heard from him before.

"That's really selfish," he said coldly.

Ian was so startled that he lowered his arm, squinting over at Salty.

"Your family is relying on you," Salty said. "Your kids. Your wife. Your parents. They're all counting on you to do the best you can to survive this."

"You don't know them and you barely know me," Ian said, stung by the harshness in Salty's voice. "They're better off without me."

"Man," Salty said, shaking his head, "I guess I don't really know you at all. I can't believe you're sitting there feeling sorry for yourself when your wife is at home probably trying to figure out how she'll explain it to your kids if they have to grow up without their dad."

"And how is that my fault?" Ian shouted, sitting up quickly. "How is _any_ of it my goddamned fault?"

"It's not," Salty said, "but that don't mean you don't get up every day willing to do your best and be accountable."

"Ugh, stop spitting back all of that positivity garbage they teach us in the team psychologist's office. It's all so phony. What do we know about anything? We play a fucking game for a living and that's all we know, those make-believe, pretend things that don't count in the real world. This is so fucking real right now and I don't know how the fuck to handle it, and I'm sick of sitting here watching you act like you're in a visiting clubhouse somewhere and you just have to go out there and _try_."

Salty laughed mirthlessly. "Wow," he said. "I don't know what I ever did to make you think I'm such a fuckin' idiot."

"Maybe it's your face," Ian said viciously.

"You need to grow the fuck up," Salty said, and then he turned away from Ian and went back to his mattress. He picked up his discarded t-shirt and pulled it over his head, then reached underneath the mattress and pulled out the Bible he'd asked for, opening it up and beginning to read.

Ian watched him for a while, noting the way his lips moved silently, like he was reading the words out loud to himself under his breath.

"You're a hypocrite," Ian said loudly, interrupting it. "Don't even pretend like you're so dedicated to your family and you care about them so much. If you did, why were you at the ballpark first thing every morning and the last to leave every night? You telling me that wasn't because it wasn't a fucking relief not to be around them, to have somewhere to go where you felt more at home than in your own house, with your own family?"

Salty looked up at him for a moment and then back down at the Bible. "I made a big mistake," he said. "I did it when I was too young to know better but I'm living with it. And I'm doing the best I can."

"Well what the fuck do you think I'm doing?" Ian said. "It's not like I haven't tried to do the right thing. I've done my share of fucking up but I've tried to make it right and be a good person, be good to my family. But I'm starting to think--things are all wrong, and I can't tell if it's--if being here--it's just messing with my head," he finished brokenly, confused and angry with Salty and yet not wanting Salty to be angry with him all at once.

Salty looked up again, and Ian had to avoid his eyes, tucking his knees up and rocking a little bit, staring at the wall instead.

Out of the periphery of his vision he sensed Salty standing up and moving over to Ian's side of the cell, and then the mattress dipped with Salty's weight as he sat down next to Ian.

"What are you talking about?" Salty asked.

Ian kept rocking for a little bit before he could figure out what to say that wouldn't make him sound like a head-case. "I don't know. Just--being here--you start to think about stuff."

Suddenly Salty raised a hand and rested it heavily on Ian's bare shoulder. Ian could feel the calluses on his palm, the hot weight of it, and despite the heat he felt himself shiver involuntarily.

"You always used to tell me not to think about things too hard," Salty said.

"Again," Ian said hollowly, "baseball. Not real. I don't fucking know how to do anything else. And I definitely don't know how to handle myself when I've been kidnapped and you're the only person I see day in and day out."

Salty took his hand away, and Ian looked up quickly. "No, I didn't mean--well." He tried to stop himself from saying more but he heard how his words sounded and they were more cruel than he intended, for once. "It's just starting to get really weird. In my head."

"Well," Salty said, "maybe if you got into a routine like I've been tryin' to do you wouldn't have as much time to think about things goin' wrong in your head."

He got up then and stood silently for a while, regarding Ian. After a few minutes he turned around, raising his arms up, and beginning some kind of yoga routine.

Ian was quiet too, watching him and listening to the rain fall.

*

Eventually he did get up and start stretching with Salty. It was tight in the small space, and Ian was amazed at how out of shape he was already. He was winded relatively soon and by then their breakfast was delivered. Salty got his coffee as usual in a small tin cup and he shared all of his food with Ian, who was hungry enough to finish his gruel as well as more than half of what was on Salty's plate.

It continued to rain, and Salty sat down for his Bible study. Ian was bored, so he told Salty to read out loud.

Salty's voice was very soporific and soon Ian was lulled to sleep. He woke up a while later feeling even hotter and stickier and terribly out of sorts, and he had another boner.

Salty was standing up on his bed again, looking out the window at the rain. The humidity had made his hair frizz up, but he was sweating enough that it was damp all around his scalp, too, and the effect was ludicrous.

"I wish we had some fucking privacy," Ian said savagely.

Salty swiveled his head around to look at Ian. "Oh, you're awake." He paused, staring for a moment, and then grinned. "Your hair's stickin' up on one side."

"Your hair looks stupid too," Ian retorted. And then he made a noise of extreme discontent, snarling into his hands and rubbing his face and hair in frustration. "I just want a shave and a comb and a sandwich," Ian said. "That's all I fucking want, just that and I could feel a little more civilized."

"Oh," Salty said, "that reminds me, they came to get our dishes while you were asleep. I asked them if we could have toothbrushes and some toothpaste. I hope they understood what I was saying. Anyway, we'll see what we get."

Ian knew he should probably thank Salty for making an effort but the words stuck in his throat. "You forgot the razor, didn't you," he said instead.

"Oh," Salty said, "dang. Sorry."

"Figures," Ian said sourly.

"I'll try to remember to ask next time," Salty said.

Ian didn't answer, so Salty turned back to the window after a moment.

Ian reached down to adjust himself in his underwear, willing his erection down.

"What are you looking at?" he said after a while, noticing that Salty had not moved much at all.

"Oh, nothing," Salty said. "The rain, I guess. I'm just thinking."

"Thinking about what?" Ian asked.

"About what they're saying about us back home. If they know what happened to us."

"Yeah, they've probably got our eulogies all written up," Ian said. "Mine'll have something about how I always swung for the fences and popped up in 85% of my plate appearances. Which," he added sternly, "is _not_ true."

Salty chuckled. "Yeah, and mine says something about how I can't throw back to the pitcher."

Ian bit at his nails, examining them closely. "So how did you get over that, anyway?"

"What, the throwing?"

"Yeah."

Salty shrugged, still looking out the window. "It wasn't that big of a deal."

Ian scoffed. "What are you talking about, it was a huge deal. So big that you got sent down and we never saw you again."

"I just had to heal up."

"Bullshit," Ian said. "That was some serious mental thing. Didn't they have you talkin' to therapists every day and everyone was sure your career was over and all that?"

Salty was silent for a minute.

"No one understands who hasn't gone through it," he said. "I was feeling a lot of pressure at the time."

"We all were," Ian said. "But you're the only one who forgot how to throw."

"No, I mean--there was some personal stuff mixed in there."

Ian waited for Salty to elaborate, his curiosity piqued.

Salty looked reluctant, but he finally relented. "Me and my wife almost got a divorce."

"Oh," Ian said. "So...why didn't you?"

"'Cause she got pregnant again."

"You mean you were about to get a divorce and you were still fucking?"

"Well--well sometimes you just need to, right?"

"Yeah, but...there's ways to get some without getting your wife pregnant. The wife you're trying to get a divorce from. And anyway, I thought you said before that she was okay with you doing what you wanted as long as you didn't give her herpes or whatever."

"Well, that was before we agreed about that. And I mean, she's still my wife, even though we had our problems."

"So did she make it sound like getting knocked up was an accident?"

"Yeah, but I'm not gonna pretend like I wasn't excited when she told me. It helped us a lot, actually. For a while, at least."

"So why were you wanting a divorce in the first place?"

Salty worried his upper lip with his lower lip for a few seconds. "I think I kept thinking there was something better, something more. It made me say and do some stupid things. But no one's life is perfect, and I don't really got a lot to complain about."

Ian frowned. This sounded very familiar. Telling himself he needed to ignore the feelings of restlessness and discontent when he thought about Tess and the pitfalls of marriage to one woman, how sometimes it felt so unnatural and confining that he couldn't understand how any man coped with it, but felt pressure from everyone to stick with it, to bury his head in the sand.

"So...then she got pregnant and everything was okay again and you didn't have your throwing problem?"

"Well, it wasn't that simple, but I just tried to have a good attitude about everything and put my trust in Christ." He reached down and fingered the red wristband he had on. "That's why we got these, to remind us."

"What does it say?" Ian said, craning his head up to try to see the white letters on the wristband.

"It's a Bible verse. Philippians 4:13. 'I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.'"

"Wait," Ian said, "what do you mean 'we'?"

"Oh, Ash has one too. She got them made for us so we could both wear them."

"So," Ian said, "your wife brainwashed you with some lame Bible verse to convince you to stay in a relationship you couldn't stand?"

Salty frowned. "No one brainwashed me," he said.

"Dude, sorry to break it to you, but she totally did. Trying to make you think you had to stick with it just because Jesus would make it easier?"

"He has made it easier," Salty said.

"You Christians are all the same," Ian said impatiently, frustrated by Salty's inability to see the truth of the matter. "Thinking Jesus is the answer to all your problems and is gonna make everything bad about your life go away. People in power always use God as an excuse to not let other people get what they want in life. And your wife did the same thing to you."

"All she wanted was for me to step up and be a man about things," Salty said. "Life isn't all about getting what you want. And besides, she's the one who's been supporting my baseball career all along, trying to give me what I want. Moving our whole family at least once every six months, taking care of the kids, following me all around the country when I was traded or going to camp or playing winter ball, sticking with me when I was sent down and brought up and sent down again. She's done everything for me."

"But she wouldn't have had to do any of that if she hadn't convinced you to marry her and get her pregnant before you even got to the bigs," Ian pointed out. "You think she did you a favor by marrying you? Literally everyone thinks it's weird. Do you even realize? From what I can see she's done more to hold you back than she has to support you." The words just kept coming, and on some level Ian realized he was really putting his foot in it and saying things that he shouldn't, but he couldn't help himself.

"What?" Salty said, beginning to look angry.

"Your wife. She isn't doing you any favors. It's like--like you married your mom or something. And you're still a kid she's gonna take care of but you're also an old man because she keeps you on such a tight leash doing all the things people her age do instead of letting you do stuff you should be doing, or should've been doing when you were young."

"What, like playin' around? Bein' a drunk and whoring around and worse?"

"See, who says that? Whoring around? What are you, my grandpa? And worst of all she's using Jesus to keep you from realizing it. You think you're being a good Christian or whatever by staying married to her but really you're just--"

"Stop it," Salty said harshly. "Why are you trying to get me to hate her?"

"I'm not!" Ian said. "I'm just trying to get you to see the truth."

"Why do you care about my relationship with Jesus or my wife or anything? I can't just bail on her and my kids. I can't. She's the only one who gets me."

"Oh, please," Ian scoffed. "She doesn't 'get' anything. All she cares about is that she got her hooks in you early and she gets to ride that for the rest of her life."

"You don't know anything about us," Salty said quietly. He got that sad look again, the look that always made Ian feel a little squirmy and strange inside.

He turned back around to resume looking out the window, and Ian lay back down to stare up at the ceiling.

He remembered Salty saying in their argument before that he had made a mistake but he was trying to live with it, which was why he spent so much more time at the ballpark than other guys did. He probably needed that little bit of extra space and time to himself if he was trying so hard to do the right thing all the rest of the time.

Ian didn't know why it made him so mad that Salty was justifying marriage and trying to find a way to be okay with sticking together for his family's sake, because really, Ian was doing the same thing, though he didn't have Jesus to help numb him to the discontent of his situation, he thought disdainfully.

It was infuriating, but Ian began to feel bad, looking over at the back of Salty's head, that Salty had been confiding personal things and Ian had done nothing but try to make him feel stupid about it.

"Hey," he said awkwardly after a while.

Salty didn't answer.

"Sorry I made fun of your beliefs," Ian said baldly.

Salty turned back to look at Ian briefly, then looked back out the window. "It's okay," he said eventually.

"I just--" Ian continued, struggling a little, "I want a real reason for why I should keep trying to stick with Tess. I mean, everyone says it's for the kids but tons of people raise their kids divorced and the kids are fine, right? So what is it? Why do I feel like I have to keep it together, like it's the best option I have? How is it doing the right thing when we can't fucking stand each other most of the time? You have Jesus or God or whoever to tell you that it's the right thing, and you believe it, but I don't have that. All I have is--" He broke off abruptly.

"What?" Salty asked, turning around all the way to look at Ian. "What do you have?"

Ian looked up at Salty. "Fear," he said.

Salty stepped down from on top of the mattress and sat down facing Ian. "What are you afraid of?" he asked.

Ian worked his jaw a few times, trying to think of how to answer this in the least revealing way possible. Such a way probably didn't exist.

"Well, I'm afraid of making a huge mistake. What if this is as good as it gets and I throw it all away for nothing?"

"What is it that you're unhappy with?" Salty asked.

"I don't even know. My wife is hot. Everyone thinks so. She's great with the kids. Keeps the house looking awesome. Does everything right. All that and I can barely stand touching her, at the end of the day."

Salty frowned, which made Ian feel defensive again.

"I can't help it," he said. "It used to be fine, I mean I used to like her fine. But you just get tired of people, and maybe that's what marriage is, just, like, finding a way to be okay with how sick you are of someone. But then what's the freakin' POINT?"

Salty didn't answer. He was just staring at Ian, his cow eyes big and blank. Maybe he didn't even get what Ian was trying to say. Ian was just so desperate to have someone to talk to that he was deluding himself about the viability of his conversation partner.

Wanting to shake things up suddenly, feeling vulnerable and frustrated at the same time, Ian decided to go on the offensive.

"You watched me jerk off last night, didn't you?" he said.

The words were out there between them, suddenly, and Ian couldn't take them back.

Salty's eyes flickered a little bit, but he still didn't say anything.

"I started--I was thinking about you watching me when I came," Ian said.

Oh, God, what was he saying? But he couldn't stop himself. It was as if the words were being drawn out of him against his will, but he wanted to shock Salty, jolt him out of his complacent idiocy.

"That's what I meant when I said this is messing with my head. I heard you jerking off the other night and--for some reason I can't stop thinking about it."

Salty's eyes widened a little bit and then, abruptly, their cell door opened.

It was Luis again, even though it seemed early for dinner.

He brought one toothbrush, a tube of what must've been toothpaste, though the label was unrecognizable, and he also had a small transistor radio.

He said some things in Spanish, smiling, and Salty got up immediately, going over to Luis to receive this bounty.

Ian watched them, Salty making hand gestures and thanking him multiple times, and then he was gone, and Salty was standing there with a small radio in one hand a toothbrush and toothpaste in the other.

"He's not a bad guy," he said, avoiding Ian's eyes and moving back toward his bed. "It was real nice of him to think of bringin' us the radio. See, they don't want us hurt. He wants to give us something to do. I wonder if we can even get any stations out here. From what I can tell out the window it looks like we're out in the middle of nowhere, but maybe the city's just behind those trees and we're closer than we think. I guess everything's in Spanish anyway. I wonder if they have a station that plays American music. That'd probably cheer me up a little, I don't know about you."

He kept talking, an endless stream of meaningless chatter, and Ian knew he was trying to avoid addressing whatever it was they'd been getting at before the interruption.

Ian felt like screaming. He was really going to go crazy, and, worse, he was pretty sure he was locked up with someone who was going to do his best to pretend like everything was just fine.

*

Salty spent most of the day afterward fiddling with the radio, trying to get a music station to come in, but mostly what he found was static noise and the occasional faint sound of talk shows that consisted of men talking very rapidly in Spanish.

He offered to let Ian share his dinner again but Ian refused, eating a few spoonfuls of his nutritious and completely bland gruel and then abandoning it to lie on his back again, staring at the ceiling and reliving the moment they'd been kidnapped, coming up with a lot of what ifs and if onlys. What if he'd been just a little sooner in coming down to the lobby the morning of the kidnapping and they'd gotten an earlier start? What if he'd been paying attention to what was happening outside the car they were in instead of playing a game on his phone? What if he'd gone in the other car instead of with Salty? If only they'd had a few more bodyguards. If only he carried a concealed weapon. If only he'd never come on this stupid trip in the first place.

They brushed their teeth after eating, spitting into the waste bucket, which had thankfully been emptied when the food was brought in, and Ian nearly cried from how good it felt afterward. He was gradually realizing that he barely even noticed the slight hum and buzz of mosquitoes and the itching of his various bug bites, and even his growing beard wasn't bothering him as much as it had been even just that morning. His jaw didn't hurt anymore and the spot where his tooth had come out, just behind his left upper canine tooth, was hardening and didn't feel like such a gaping hole. He was starting to not notice the smell of the cell, either, even with their waste collecting in an open bucket for hours, sometimes, before it was emptied. Apparently a person could get used to pretty much anything. It was an extremely lowering thought.

Soon it was too dark in the cell to see and Salty shut the radio off. They both settled into their mattresses and Ian stared up into the darkness.

It was too hot to sleep, and anyway he'd already taken a very long nap earlier in the day.

His mind began to wander and, of course, he began to think about jerking off again.

Maybe, he thought, his heart rate quickening a little, he could get Salty to notice and look over again. Just to stir things up, force him to acknowledge what had happened the night before. Would he tell Ian to stop? Would he _make_ Ian stop because he didn't want to have to acknowledge it?

For some reason the idea of Salty making him do anything caused Ian's dick to twitch, and he reached down to rub his hand against it through his shorts.

He looked over at Salty. He could see the vague shape of him, and he could tell that his head was turned slightly away from Ian.

Determined to get Salty's attention, Ian sat up in the darkness, pushing his boxer briefs down and off and sitting there, brazenly, completely naked.

He'd lived with guys before, in college and in the minors, but being in this close, confined space with Salty was different, obviously. Ian felt completely immodest. They were doing everything in front of each other and Ian had a vague sense that he was forgetting what it felt like to feel shame in front of Salty. They had to ignore so many things, or pretend like they were ignoring things, that Ian realized he'd begun to buy into the illusion.

It also probably had to do with their isolation and Ian's doubts about ever getting out of this cell alive--a kind of recklessness, knowing that the two of them were in this together and there was no one, at least not in the foreseeable future, that Salty could tell about any of this. His reality was Ian's and Ian's reality was Salty's; they were one and the same, and nothing Ian did here could leave the confines of these walls.

Feeling emboldened and reckless and excited, Ian began jerking off, lifting one foot up onto the bed and letting the other dangle down on the ground. This position felt even more brazen and shameless, and he tipped his head back a little, watching the dark shape of Salty.

He let himself breathe a little harder, wanting Salty to hear him, but then when Salty turned his head around Ian froze, his hand still on his dick.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Salty said. But despite the harshness of the words he didn't sound angry.

Ian couldn't answer, his voice stuck in his throat, but his dick throbbed sensitively, and that tortured feeling came back, the same as the night before when he'd been unable to stop thinking about Salty, that flush of desire that made him feel desperate and out of control. Almost against his will he began to move his hand again, and it was even more intense now than it had been the night before, because now he knew Salty was watching him, hearing every shaky breath and fixated on the fact that Ian was brazenly pleasuring himself right in front of Salty's eyes.

Salty moved, then, the vague shape of him lurching upward, and then he was sitting upright.

"Salty," Ian said involuntarily, hearing a strange whine in his own voice, a plaintive, horribly needy sound that he'd never made before in his life.

"Seriously, Ian, stop," Salty said, and he sounded almost afraid, but that just made Ian feel more desperate, and in just a few more seconds he came, scrunching his eyes shut and biting his lip to keep from saying something stupid, something he couldn't take back.

He came down slowly, the euphoria fading, and then he was just a sweaty, itchy, smelly guy with his junk hanging out. He reached down quickly to snatch up his underwear and pull it back up.

"Why'd you do that?" Salty said as Ian was adjusting himself.

"Do what," Ian said.

"What you were just doing," Salty said. "And--it's like you _wanted_ me to watch you."

Ian shrugged. "Because I felt like it," he said.

He turned around, mad at himself for letting his boredom and his horniness get out of hand that way, and prepared to go back to sleep, but then Salty said, "Wait a minute. What do you think you're doing?"

Ian froze again for a second before turning back to Salty. Everything in his mind was coalescing into something like a single exclamation point, because Salty's voice suddenly sounded different--forceful, imperative.

"I'm going back to sleep," Ian said slowly.

He waited, then, for Salty to do something, anything, to tell Ian he was a fag, to make Ian return the favor and watch while Salty beat off, even to come over and punish Ian by making him suck Salty off. That last unbidden and extremely shocking thought made his face heat up again, and he realized he was holding his breath.

But then, after staring at Ian for a few seconds, Salty just lay back down on his mattress turned away from Ian.

A long while later, Ian was still awake, facing away from Salty, unable to stop thinking about what it might've been like if Salty had shoved his cock down Ian's throat, gripping his hair and making Ian gag as he ruthlessly sought his own pleasure. Ian's mind was jumbled with conflicting feelings about it, stuttering uselessly from confusion to revulsion to fascination and back again. Then, suddenly, he heard it, the repetitive, faint yet distinctive sound of someone jacking off. Ian didn't dare move, but when he heard Salty stifle a groan of satisfaction when he came several seconds later, he couldn't help smiling to himself in the dark.

*

The next morning Ian wanted to meet Salty's eyes, see if there would be some kind of acknowledgment about what had transpired the night before. Ian himself, surprisingly, was feeling no regret. The sense of being completely isolated from the outside world was intensifying, and it was as if nothing that happened within the walls of the cell would have any consequences in the world at large. He was making peace with the thoughts he was having, both the doubts about his choices, his marriage, his career, and also the undeniably homosexual urges he was feeling toward his cellmate, by simply avoiding all thoughts about life outside of the here and now.

Things with Salty here were very different from how they'd been when they were on a baseball team together, after all. Ian remembered that back in the day Salty had had a locker very near to Ian's, and he remembered talking to Salty nearly every day, but still he had never wanted to pay much attention Salty, never really looked at him except to be critical of his baseball ability and all the ways in which he might've been holding the team back.

Now he'd been forced to pay attention to Salty, to memorize the way he moved, to learn the rhythm of his breathing, to predict the direction of his gaze and to recognize the cadences in his voice. Perhaps if they ever got out of this terrible predicament he could forget all of these things, but here, confronted with them at every turn, he felt almost as if he had to internalize them or risk going completely insane by trying to deflect them, inescapable and insidious and dominating as they were.

Funny, to think about Salty as being dominating in any way, Ian reflected, watching Salty trying to figure out how to mount the radio halfway up the wall where the reception was best (though still, Ian noted, barely decipherable as human voices) using his discarded socks and t-shirt. He was concentrating very hard, his tongue sticking out from between his lips as he tried to fashion a kind of sling that could be tied from the bars in the window to hang down the wall a little ways. The knots worked but the resulting sling did not allow for an ample enough cradle and the radio teetered precariously in it for a few seconds before coming crashing down to the ground.

"Damn," Salty said, picking it up and inspecting it carefully. "Hope it's not broken."

"Why are you so obsessed with that radio, anyway?" Ian said, lounging on his mattress and chewing his dirty nails. "It's not like we can understand any of it. Even if we knew Spanish I doubt we could hear anything they're saying."

"I dunno," Salty said, looking up briefly and then turning back to examine the radio for damage. "Hm. Seems to be working fine." He turned back around to untie the knots and start over.

Ian wondered if Salty was avoiding him by focusing so busily on the radio. So Ian got up and went over to Salty's side of the room, the first time he'd ever done so. He stepped up onto the bed so that he could look out the window, conveniently putting his ass right at Salty's eye-level.

As he gazed out at the view, which looked out onto a small area of cleared land and then some trees, mountains visible in the distance, he noticed Salty scooting a bit further away, turning so that he could work facing the other side.

Ian turned his head to look down at Salty, his eyes narrowing a little bit, and then he stepped down off of the bed and back to his own.

"I'm bored," he announced. "Let's play Would You Rather."

Salty looked up quickly, his eyes wide. But then they were always wide, so Ian didn't really know if that meant anything other than that he had Salty's attention.

"I haven't done my reading yet," Salty said, turning back to the sling.

"Fuck your reading, you've been reading that Bible every day since we got here. How much reading does a person need, anyway?"

"It helps keep me grounded," Salty said.

"Well, I need conversation to keep me grounded," Ian said, rolling his eyes. "Every minute of silence in this place makes me feel like I'm going a little crazier."

Salty stopped working the knot, which he still hadn't managed to untie, and then set the makeshift sling down slowly.

"Okay, fine," he said. He brought his long legs up to cross them on the bed, leaning back against the cement wall.

"I'll go first," Ian said. "We'll start with something easy. How about...would you rather be a chronic burper or chronic farter?"

"Farter," Salty said immediately. "It's funnier."

"True," Ian said. "Although I can't believe you still think that after being married. Tess made me sleep on the couch for a week after I hot-boxed her one time."

"The way you talk about her, that doesn't sound like such a bad punishment for you," Salty said. 

Ian eyed Salty suspiciously, but his face looked very innocent. "Well at the time I was pretty chapped about it. I mean, who doesn't think a hot box is hilarious?"

"I don't know," Salty said. "I never tried it on anyone, much less my wife."

"Yeah, I'd be scared to try if my wife was my teacher."

"Okay, this topic is off limits," Salty said quickly.

"You're the one who started talking about my wife," Ian said.

Salty shrugged slightly.

"Well, it's your turn," Ian said.

Salty thought for a minute. "Would you rather..." He paused, his eyes darting around the cell. "Okay, would you rather lick a dude's armpit hair or lick the floor here?"

"Good one," Ian said encouragingly, since Salty was obviously getting into the spirit of it, even though it hadn't been a good one at all. "But that's easy. Obviously a dude's armpit."

Salty's brow furrowed. "Why obviously?"

"Well, I mean I guess technically it would depend on the dude."

"Why, whose armpit hair would you lick?"

"Are you kidding? Look at the floor here," Ian said. "I mean, people have probably _died_ here. And rotted in the heat for days before they were found." He eyed Salty narrowly. "So you're saying you'd rather lick the floor than lick my armpit right now?" He raised his arm up and gave himself a little sniff. "Not too bad, considering."

Salty raised his eyebrows. "You inviting me to come over there and lick your armpit?"

Ian quickly lowered his arm. "Well, not when you put it like that."

Salty smirked a little, which was annoying.

"Okay," Ian said, "You want the gross ones? Here's one. Would you rather drink a cup of sperm or a cup of period blood?

Salty grimaced. "What the fuck? That is sick. How did you even--neither. I choose neither."

"You have to pick one."

Salty thought for a long time, a pronounced frown of disgust on his face. "Is it my sperm or someone else's?"

"Are you saying it would make a difference?"

"Maybe."

"Wow, so you'd actually consider drinking period blood?"

"So this is another no-brainer for you, then?" Salty said flatly.

"Well--yeah," Ian said. "I mean, it's blood. That came out of a snatch."

"I mean, if you think about it, you lived in that blood for nine months of your life, so..."

"That's not blood!" Ian protested. "It's that fluid, what's it called. There's a name for it."

Salty thought for another moment. "I guess--I mean, I swallowed a bunch of blood from a nosebleed once," Salty said. "It made me feel pretty sick. I guess I'd choose the sperm."

"Yours or someone else's?"

Salty gave a little half-laugh, half-groan. "It wouldn't fuckin' matter. Bad either way."

"Didn't you ever try tasting your own cum?" Ian asked.

Salty stared at Ian.

"When I joined my frat in college," Ian said, "one night they made all the pledges jack off into a cup and then we had to taste it. Then they mixed all of 'em up and you had to try to figure out which one was yours by taste."

"So--you've pretty much drunk a cup of cum before, is that what you're saying?" Salty said.

"Well, not a whole cup, probably," Ian said. "I bent my cup a little on one side so I could tell which one was mine and I guessed it right away. The other dudes didn't think to do that, apparently."

"How'd it taste?" Salty said.

"Not bad," Ian said. "I mean, it wasn't like custard or anything. Kind of like snot. A little...I don't know. Salty, maybe." He paused. "Anyone ever told you your cum was salty?"

Salty's face suddenly split into a big grin. "Uh, no," he said.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Salty said. "It's my turn, ain't it?"

"Yes," Ian said suspiciously.

"Okay. Let's see...would you rather..." His voice drifted off as he racked his brains. "Alright, would you rather cut off one of your own arms or all of your toes one by one?"

"Jesus," Ian said, imagining how much he'd have to saw to get his arm off. Like in the movie. "Wow, that's really tough. I mean, I guess I'd need my hand more than my toes, but to have to go through that long enough to cut off ten digits...I think even so I'd have to go with the toes. It would suck while it was happening but I think I'd be glad after that I didn't cut off the arm."

"Yeah, I think that's pretty much how I would think of it," Salty said.

Ian sat for a few seconds picturing a very bloody and gruesome scenario where that might be necessary.

"Ugh, gross," was his ultimate conclusion. "Okay, enough with the gross out questions. Here's a philosophical one. Would you rather not play baseball at all or play but always lose every single game?"

"Wow," Salty said. "I guess--wow, that's a tough one."

"I mean, we both know what it's like," Ian said.

"Speak for yourself," Salty retorted.

"You're the one on a sucky team," Ian said defensively. 

Salty gave him a look that reminded Ian very much of the way his dog would flatten his ears and glare and Ian when he was annoyed about being teased and manhandled too much.

"And I was a Ranger before 2010. We both were," Ian conceded. "I still would've rather been playing ball than doing anything else."

"Yeah, but we didn't _always_ lose," Salty said. "I mean, we still had hope. In this...scenario, or whatever, do we know we're always gonna lose? Or do we keep playing like we think we could win every day?"

"Let's say you don't know," Ian said. "Would you still keep trying, even? I mean, it's hard enough after a 10-game losing streak, can you imagine having the will to go back out there after losing 50? 100? 300?"

"I don't know," Salty said. "I think as long as I was out there playing with guys who know how to have fun and love each other there's still nothing I'd rather do than play ball."

Ian cringed at Salty's wording. "Yeah, well, I don't know if I could handle it. Losing is the worst. I'd probably kill myself, since there really isn't anything else I can imagine doing."

"I can't really, either, but I definitely wouldn't kill myself," Salty said, sounding a bit shocked.

"Yeah, I don't know how you're so, like, positive all the time."

"Not all the time," Salty said.

"I mean, fuck, even _here_ you're like up exercising and reading and trying to invent a way to hang that radio on the wall with your clothes."

"What else should I be doing?" Salty said, frowning a little. "Lying down with my face to the wall refusing to move, like you?"

"Oh, God, don't start on this again," Ian said. "Enough with the nagging. You're worse than my wife."

Salty shrugged, still frowning.

Ian rolled his eyes. "Well, it's your turn."

Salty was quiet for a moment while he thought. And then he said, "Would you rather be the worst player on the best team or the best player on a bad team?"

Ian hesitated. He knew what he was supposed to say: that all that mattered was winning, that your own personal achievements meant nothing as long as your team was doing well. That's what he would've said anywhere else, to anybody else, maybe even to Salty had they not been in this situation. 

But he had also seen what it was like when a guy had to walk around the clubhouse unable to meet anyone's eyes. It wasn't so noticeable when the team was winning, but Ian noticed it. And honestly, it did make him treat them differently, if only because he never knew quite what to say or how to approach them. He'd been in slumps himself, of course, and it felt fucking awful to know you weren't doing your part. Every look and every word a guy said to you felt like some kind of veiled dig or accusation.

"Honestly? And I know this goes against everything we're coached to say in interviews, but--I'd rather be the best on a bad team."

Salty sighed. "Well, I've never been the best on any team, but I've been worst on a good team and I've been the only productive guy on a losing team. And let me tell you, being the only one trying or doing anything is way worse."

"Really?" Ian said incredulously. He remembered Salty being one of those guys that he tried to avoid when Salty had been struggling and having very public and very embarrassing throwing gaffes.

"Yeah, because at least you don't feel that pressure. I mean, sure, you wanna pull your weight, and you feel pressure to not be the guy everyone decides the team would be better off without, but when the mood is good and everyone's cheerful guys will usually have patience with you, and everyone's sharing the good mood."

"Wow, see, I feel like a leech if I'm on a team that's winning and I'm not pulling my weight."

"You may see yourself that way but I don't think other guys would. We've all been there; everyone understands."

"You mean you don't judge someone who's doing bad? Just a little?" Ian said skeptically.

"No," Salty said.

"I was judging you," Ian said bluntly. "When you obviously had shit to figure out and you weren't doing what you needed to to get straightened out."

Salty looked blank for a minute. "But--I remember I went to you, and you told me--you gave me the best advice anyone gave me. You told me to never get too high or too low, to have the same attitude no matter how I was playing and that would carry me through."

"I did?" Ian said.

"Yeah," Salty said, and his fucking _eyes_ , Ian thought, feeling that strange, visceral anger he always felt when confronted with how soft and exposed they sometimes made Salty's face.

"Well, it's good advice. It's my dad's advice."

"I was grateful for it and I always remembered it."

Ian was quiet for a bit. He felt bad, now, that he'd probably given Salty some recycled pep talk while he secretly hoped they would get a better, more reliable catcher who didn't obviously have so many issues in both his personal and professional life, and Salty had taken it to heart so much. He remembered thinking that it had probably been a terrible thing for Salty to be named a top prospect and all that, since it was true, what his dad said. It was a fine line between trying as hard as you could and trying too hard, and Salty had crossed it, a thing that was hard to come back from.

"Look, I'm sorry I wasn't a better....friend to you back then, I guess," Ian said awkwardly.

"You were fine," Salty said, looking down at his left thumb, which he was massaging with his right hand. "I mean, I guess I thought you were a good friend and that's what matters."

That made Ian feel infinitely worse.

"I just--I mean, I'm a punk, don't listen to anything I say," he said hastily.

Salty looked up. "I guess I have a pattern of thinking people are my friends and then realizing later that it was pretty one-sided."

"Well that--that sucks," Ian said, extremely uncomfortable.

Salty shrugged. "It's okay. But--I mean, that's a big part of why I stay with my wife even after--stuff happened. I sometimes feel like my family's all I got."

"I guess that's all anyone's got," Ian said.

Silence descended. Ian surmised that they were both thinking of their families and whether or not they'd see them again. It was so strange and sobering to remember, every few minutes, that the possibility existed that they wouldn't. How many people ever had to wonder that? It was messed up, Ian thought for the thousandth time, gritting his teeth at the unfairness of it.

The silence was eventually broken by the sounds of some vehicle engines. It sounded like someone was arriving at the compound. Or several someones. But as this happened several times a day Ian didn't pay much attention to it, and the sound died down, followed by some faint shouting.

He looked over at Salty, who was still massaging his thumb, his mouth just slightly down-turned. Determined to lighten the mood, Ian decided to forge on.

"Okay," he said, "my turn, right?"

Salty looked up. "We still doing this?"

"You got a better idea? _Don't_ say you have to do you reading," Ian said, seeing Salty open his mouth and trying to preempt the inevitable. "You can read later when I take a nap."

"Fine," Salty said. "Do your worst."

"Okay," Ian said eagerly. "I thought of one that someone asked when we were playing this on the plane one time. Would you--" He broke off to laugh to himself at the memory. "Prepare yourself, now. Are you prepared? Because this is like, epic. This is the ultimate Would You Rather question."

"All right, out with it," Salty said.

"Would you," Ian said, then paused for dramatic effect before slowly enunciating the grossest question he'd ever heard. "Would you rather have your grandpa go down on you or you go down on your grandma?"

He watched as a look of consummate revulsion overcome Salty's face instantly, and Ian laughed even harder. 

"What the hell kind of question is that?" Salty demanded. "That is wrong. That is so, so wrong. I should not have to answer that. In fact I should punch you in the face for even putting that image in my head. Ugh, I can't stop thinking about it now." He buried his face in his hands, and Ian slapped his knees gleefully.

"C'mon, you have to answer," he said. "I had to answer when they asked me."

"What if I refuse?" Salty said.

"Then..." Ian's eyes darted around the cell. Quick as he could, he darted forward and snatched up the radio that had been sitting, forgotten, on the bed next to Salty.

"Then I'll throw this out the window," Ian said.

"Nuh-uh," Salty said, rising up after Ian, and Ian felt a rush of something he hadn't felt in what seemed like a long time--the thrill of a contest, of competition, of being chased.

"I totally will," Ian said, holding the radio behind his back and ducking just out of the reach of Salty's swiping hand.

"You really gonna make me get that thing back from you?" Salty said.

Ian shrugged, his mouth wide open in a smile. "If you think you can." His heart rate was quickening and his body felt almost tingly as he strategized avoiding Salty's reach in the small space of the cell, his eyes quickly darting around to gauge the landscape.

Salty lunged forward and Ian scrambled underneath Salty's arm and toward his bed on the opposite side. Salty was bigger and stronger but Ian was more agile, and every time Salty almost caught him he would twist a little and avoid Salty, and they crashed around the cell, going in circles and cross-wise and in figure-eights until Ian was starting to get a little winded, when finally he turned to see where Salty was and all of a sudden Salty threw his entire weight toward Ian and crushed Ian underneath his body on Ian's bed.

"Motherfucker," Ian gasped, laughing as he gripped the radio under his own body against the mattress.

"Give it back," Salty said, likewise trying to work his hands under Ian's stomach to pry his fingers off of the radio.

"Ow, ow, that tickles. Get off me, you're too heavy--"

"Not 'til you give the radio back--"

"Augh!" Ian said, as Salty's fingers dug into his side. Ian squirmed and laughed and tried to get some leverage by bringing his knees up but this just gave Salty's hands more room and he grabbed at the radio. In a desperate attempt to hold onto it Ian twisted again, but Salty didn't want him to be able to escape, it seemed, and he crushed Ian down immediately, though Ian was half twisted around, facing up. He could tell he'd lost, and Salty was so heavy, and he stopped struggling, taking a moment to catch his breath. 

He suddenly became aware of the way Salty was breathing, the streaks of sweat running down his temple in the heat. Salty was very strong but fleshy, too, soft in unexpected places, and as he raised his head up and looked down at Ian, Ian felt something stutter in his chest. It was just like what he'd dreamed about, but impossibly, unbearably vivid.

They stared at each other for a breathless moment that stretched some immeasurable length of time, and then they heard some shouting, and Salty quickly moved away.

Still breathing hard, Ian sat up, watching Salty scratch his head and move over to the corner, resting his hands on his hips and looking down at the ground, facing away from Ian.

The shouting was obviously the sound of several men arguing, and it seemed to be escalating. Ian turned his head, straining a bit to try to hear what was happening, but of course even if he had been able to decipher the words he wouldn't have been able to understand them.

"It's my turn," Salty said abruptly, and Ian started, looking around. Salty had turned and was looking straight at Ian. "Would you rather be stuck in a prison cell by yourself, or stuck in a prison cell with someone you can't stand?"

Ian stared at Salty blankly for a moment, trying to process the question. What did Salty mean by it? Was he trying to say that he couldn't stand Ian?

"Um," Ian said. "I think you know the answer to that."

"No, I don't," Salty said. He looked upset.

"Well, when I was on my own for, what, two days? Three? I almost died."

"That didn't have anything to do with bein' alone," Salty said.

Ian frowned. "What's with this question, anyway?"

"I just--I don't get you," Salty said.

"What's to get?" Ian said.

"That--just now. It's almost like you were--but then everything I do annoys you or rubs you the wrong way. I can barely move or breathe without you rolling your eyes at me or telling me to stop," Salty said. "I'm just confused. I want to know if you're just messing with me because you're bored, if you're trying to get me to--" He broke off.

"I'm not _trying_ to get you to do anything," Ian said automatically, immediately defensive, but as soon as the words left his mouth he felt guilty, because they both knew they weren't true. He was trying to get Salty to do something, to prod him into doing anything that might alleviate Ian's strange mental state that combined boredom and terror. He was pretty messed up in his own head and he wanted to mess Salty up, too, but he wondered now if it was really in the way that Salty meant.

"It's not that I can't stand you," Ian said slowly, after a short pause. "I know I've been kind of--I don't know. I'm frustrated and I'm scared and--you're just--there, and you're reading your fucking Bible and fiddling with the radio and you don't seem to even realize how fucking serious this is--"

Salty shook his head. "You don't even know," he said. "You have no idea, do you."

It was a statement, not a question, and Ian felt chastened, looking at Salty's face now. It looked harder, a contrast to how he usually looked, which was something close to childishness. Well, maybe childish was the wrong word, but when Ian thought of Salty--big, strong Salty--shedding his clothes because he was too hot, his face streaked with dirt from having had his hands on the floor as he did his push-ups, and busily fiddling with the radio, his only toy, concentrating so hard that his tongue poked out from between his lips...it _was_ childish, on some level, the actions of a boy desperately trying to find ways to avoid coping with the ramifications of something he was not prepared to face. It was frustrating to feel like the adult in the room, but maybe Ian had been wrong. Maybe it wasn't that Salty was avoiding the seriousness of their situation, but rather that he had been trying very hard not to let Ian see him think about or react to the fact that they were really in dire straits.

Ian didn't know what to say to Salty. There really wasn't much _to_ say; an apology was not really warranted, but Ian felt remorseful.

"I don't mind if you breathe," was what he came up with eventually.

Salty gave a lopsided little smile and turned away from Ian to take up his post at the window.

Ian looked down and realized that the radio was still sitting next to him on the mattress. He picked it up, looking for the On switch for a while before realizing that it was one of those old models that turned on by turning the volume dial. 

All he heard when he switched it on was static, of course, but he slowly turned the tuner to try to find something worth listening to.

He was on his way back through the AM band for a second time when he heard, very faintly, the sound of music. Fine motor skills were not really his specialty but he tried to carefully adjust the dial to find the optimal amplitude modulation. 

The music sounded like a lot of the music that you could hear scanning through Spanish-language radio stations back at home--stuff that sounded like dance music. There was a lot of static and some interference from other stations but it was unmistakable, the first time they'd been able to find a station playing music.

Ian looked up at Salty, who hadn't turned around, even though Ian turned the volume up and he was sure Salty could hear. 

Ian looked down again at the radio and made a split-second decision. He put it aside carefully, hoping the movement wouldn't interfere with the radio signal, and got up.

"You ever danced salsa?" he said, as he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet and shook his hands out, making a show of warming up.

Salty's head turned back fractionally, but then he went back to looking out the window. "No," he said.

"One, two, three," Ian said under his breath as he took a few tentative steps that constituted the basic salsa step, "five, six, seven." Elvis had tried to teach him once for a laugh, and most of the guys in the clubhouse had scoffed at them both but Ian had not really been shy with admitting that he'd enjoyed it. Elvis was actually pretty good, but he'd made Ian learn the girl part, stepping backward first instead of forward.

He started moving a little faster, trying to catch up with the music, and then raised his forearms to make them sway with his steps, trying to get his hips moving a little. It was fun, really, and it felt good to be moving, and anyway dancing was something that Ian had always secretly wished he could've done more of. Like Channing Tatum or something. Footwork in dance and baseball weren't all that far removed. It was all about agility and timing.

He tried a few little turns and was getting really into it when he looked up and saw Salty watching him.

"You wanna join me?" Ian said, dancing in place.

"You're pretty good at this, I'd just mess you up," Salty said, but he was smiling slightly, watching Ian with what appeared to be amusement and some degree, at least, of appreciation.

"I can teach you," Ian said, still swinging his hips with every step. He beckoned to Salty with one hand. "Come on, stop sulking over there."

Salty grinned, then, and he stepped down from his bed, looking almost eager, and came over to stand in front of Ian, looking down and watching Ian's legs move.

Ian always got a thrill from knowing that he was being watched, knowing that someone was appreciating his performance, whether it was baseball or anything else, and he felt that part of himself awaken again, knowing that Salty's eyes were on him.

"So you just have to count to eight. Beat four and beat eight return you to neutral, and one and five are when you step out. So count to eight with me and watch."

Salty did, dutifully counting as he watched Ian step forward and then back, forward and back, repeating this many times.

"Are you ready to try?" Ian said, not stopping.

"Yeah!" Salty said gamely, and he moved around so they were standing next to each other and he could copy Ian's movements. 

He was much clumsier, Ian noted. "Don't poke your foot forward like that. It should be kind of like walking; you gotta be, like, smooth," he coached. "Forward, two, three, back, five, six, seven." 

Salty got mixed up a few times and put the wrong foot forward, but soon he was stomping ungracefully forward and backward in time with the music.

"Now, move your hips some, that'll make it more smooth," Ian said, exaggerating his own hip movements. "Here, watch me."

Salty paused a moment, watching Ian with a smile on his face.

"Got it?" Ian said, after a few steps.

"Where'd you learn how to dance so good, anyway?" Salty asked.

"Elvis taught me in the clubhouse," Ian said.

"You look like a pro," Salty said.

"You stop it, no I don't," Ian said modestly, but he was secretly gratified by this compliment. "C'mon, you try."

So Salty did. He looked pretty funny, actually, but he was at least trying, which Ian appreciated, since most guys were too fucking embarrassed and judgmental to even be okay with watching another guy do it.

"Okay, now, c'mon," Ian said, turning around and stepping up closer to Salty and putting one hand up on Salty's shoulder. "Elvis taught me the girl part so I can dance backwards."

Salty immediately put one warm hand at Ian's waist and took his other hand in a firm grip, pulling Ian closer.

Ian felt a little flushed and stumbled a bit, but he looked down at their feet and tried to collect himself. "...Six, seven, _forward_ \--"

Salty went forward and Ian went forward, too, forgetting that he was supposed to go backward as the girl. "Oops, fuck," he said as he stepped on Salty's foot, and Salty laughed down at Ian, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Watch out there, Ricky Martin," he said.

Ian wondered for a moment whether Salty was making a dig about how this was gay, but then he decided he didn't care. Even if that had been Salty's intent, he was participating in this willingly, and even, Ian noted, feeling odd, holding Ian quite close, which was much gayer than dancing.

"Shut up, I need to concentrate," he said sternly, and counted off again.

They got it right that time, and soon they were swaying back and forth. Salty was still smiling, his earlier anger at Ian apparently forgotten. 

Ian was just beginning to wonder if they should attempt to learn how to do a turn when suddenly, out of nowhere, Salty picked Ian right up off his feet and whirled him around in a circle before setting him back down.

"Whoa," Ian said, looking up at Salty in surprise.

"Don't know how to do one of them fancy dance turns, but I just felt like spinnin' you around," Salty said.

They'd stopped dancing, and Ian became aware of the fact that the music had ended long ago, and the station was back to the rapid talking in Spanish. Ian's forearms were resting up on Salty's biceps, his hands on Salty's shoulders, and Salty was hugging Ian close, looking down at him as if--as if--

"Stop looking at me like that," Ian said, feeling a kind of panic--or was it excitement?--grip his chest.

"Like what?" Salty said.

"Like--like--" Ian swallowed. He couldn't think straight. Salty's eyes were so big, he thought helplessly. And the way he was looking at Ian made Ian feel funny, almost like he were being chased, that same urgency and fear of being caught, fear of discovery, like he was holding something inside his chest and if Salty looked too long he might overturn it, this secret thing that Ian had been protecting for his whole existence.

"Salty," Ian said desperately.

Salty didn't answer, wordlessly bringing one hand up to cup Ian's face. And then before Ian could even really process what was happening, Salty leaned forward and pressed his lips to Ian's temple.

Ian felt everything in his middle dip sharply, and he couldn't help the shiver that overtook his whole body. Salty was holding him so close, surrounding Ian and enveloping him. 

It felt good, Ian thought incoherently, suddenly overwhelmed. It felt _so good_ to have Salty so close, to have him holding Ian. For perhaps the first time since he'd woken up in that container he felt safe, secure, like his feet were planted on firm ground, even as the world was spinning around him. He reached up then, almost involuntarily, and held onto Salty, anchoring his arms around Salty's neck and breathing shakily into Salty's neck, so grateful.

Salty shifted, then, and it took a moment but Ian's eyes flew open when he realized that Salty was kissing his neck.

"Salty," he mumbled, trying to protest, but he didn't want to let go of Salty and didn't want Salty to let go of him. Salty just kept kissing him, his hands gripping Ian, not tightly but still in a way that would have felt inescapable if Ian had wanted to escape, which he didn't.

What was happening? The rational part of Ian didn't know, but some other part of him was saying that it didn't matter, that it felt good and that was what counted.

"Ian," Salty was saying, over and over again, between kissing and caressing Ian all over his neck and shoulders.

Suddenly it was too much, and Ian felt like he needed to take control of the situation or Salty was going to overturn that part of Ian on the inside and it would be impossible to cover it up again.

He flung Salty's arms away from him quickly. Surprised, Salty stared at Ian for a moment, and Ian felt something like panic. He didn't know what he wanted; he didn't want Salty to get too close, but he didn't want Salty to look sad, either, and he had mere fractions of a second before that hurt look would descend on Salty's face.

So Ian decided in an instant that he'd try to do what he'd been thinking about doing for a few days now. 

He shoved at Salty's shoulders. Salty stumbled backward, more from surprise than from the actual impact, and Ian pushed him again until Salty's back was to the wall. Then Ian knelt on one knee and pulled Salty's underwear down around his thighs, letting it fall to the ground around Salty's ankles.

"What the fuck?" he heard Salty say above him, but Ian was mesmerized again by the sight of Salty's dick.

It was bigger even than he remembered it, maybe because this time he was up close to it. 

He looked up at Salty, who seemed puzzled.

"You want me to suck your dick?" Ian said.

Salty didn't answer, still looking confused and unsure of what exactly was happening, but Ian saw immediately that his cock was beginning to harden.

Ian's own cock seemed to be responding to the sight of Salty's. Salty's was uncut and looked very different from Ian's, and Ian couldn't help reaching up to touch it, running his fingertip along the foreskin. 

Salty made a hissing noise, like he was inhaling sharply, and Ian wrapped his hand around Salty completely, amazed that he was really doing it, that he'd thought about Salty's dick so much since seeing it in the shower a few days ago and now it was right there, in his hand, making Ian want to do slavish things.

"Ian--" Salty tried again, cutting into Ian's reverie.

"No, just, don't say anything," Ian said quickly.

He tried stroking Salty a few times, wondering if he'd really have the courage to wrap his lips around it, when Salty suddenly reached down, gripping Ian's biceps in his strong hands and practically lifting Ian up off the ground.

"'S dirty," Salty said. "You might want it like that but I don't." Ian felt all the blood rush away from his face and straight to his dick at the roughness in Salty's voice.

Salty stepped out of his underwear and flipped them around so that Ian's back was against the wall, and then he reached down and got Ian's cock out of his underwear, too.

Ian's breaths were coming faster as he looked up at Salty, wondering what was going to happen, and then his knees nearly buckled when he felt Salty lean forward so that their dicks were rubbing against each other.

Salty spit into his hand and reached down, taking hold of both of them and pulling them both off roughly. It was just enough pressure to be maddeningly pleasurable but not exactly enough to come, Ian could tell, but he was helpless, able only to reach up and grab Salty's shoulders.

"Fuck," Ian gasped, his entire body flushed and tight, lost in the pleasure of feeling Salty's hand on him, but it still wasn't enough. He reached down with his own hand and gripped around Salty's, and then Salty leaned forward and bit Ian's neck, pressing his tongue to Ian's skin wetly, and then Ian felt Salty come, grunting a little bit and spurting all over Ian's stomach. 

Ian looked down, seeing Salty's come on him, and then looked up at Salty, who was blinking slowly.

"Please," he said desperately.

Salty paused for one second before reaching under Ian's cock with his other hand and pressing one finger upward firmly, squeezing Ian's cock simultaneously.

Ian heard himself make a sound of distress and surprise and then he came, his dick pulsing involuntarily over and over until he'd emptied himself.

Salty let go of Ian almost immediately and Ian had to catch himself from falling, realizing only then how much Salty had been holding him up. He felt bereft, Salty picking up his underwear and moving to the other side of the room to try to wipe himself off and put his underwear back on.

Neither of them spoke, and finally Ian realized that the stupid radio was still on, forgotten on his mattress, and he reached over to turn it off, silence filling the cell in its place.

*

Ian realized that he had not known the meaning of awkwardness until now.

Salty sat with his Bible for the rest of the day until it was too dark too read anything, and when the food came he ate by himself, facing the corner, away from Ian.

Ian was very conflicted. He wanted things to be as they were but then he thought of the way he'd flung Salty away from him when Salty had gotten so affectionate, and now he was wondering why he had done that. Quite honestly, it had been wonderful, the kind of thing that Ian had never known or imagined he would enjoy, something he hadn't ever dreamed that he wanted. He'd thought in the moment that he could make up for rejecting Salty's petting and kissing by just cutting straight to what he thought they both wanted, but now Salty was apparently upset with him and Ian, meanwhile, was realizing that far from relieving him, it had made things much worse.

Because Salty had awakened something in Ian, and he knew now that it wasn't just some kind of boredom or fixation that resulted from confinement. He'd been shocked and disconcerted by his attraction to Salty as a man, a man bigger and stronger than Ian, the way he'd made Ian feel a bit like he was at Salty's mercy, like he was something Salty could use in furtherance of his own pleasure. He'd never felt that way during sex with anyone, always more concerned with getting himself off and doing just enough that he wouldn't come off like a jerk, but with Salty it had felt different, more revealing, making Ian feel for the first time that he had not been in control at all, and there was something terribly exciting about that.

He kept hoping that Salty would let Ian catch his eye, that he would somehow open the door to communication again, but Salty did not so much as look at Ian.

So Ian tried, at one point, to provoke Salty into responding. 

"You probably just miss your wife or something," he said.

It was meant to be a joke, but as soon as he said it he realized it sounded like he was blaming and forgiving Salty for having committed some horrible gaffe. He regretted it immediately, but since Salty didn't acknowledge it anyway Ian had no opportunity to explain or apologize, and then the silence drew out too long and then Ian began to wonder if he'd even said it out loud.

That led to a very eerie few minutes of wondering whether he was invisible. If a tree fell in the forest, did it make a sound? If Salty did not acknowledge or react to anything Ian said or did, did Ian even exist?

"HEY!" Ian shouted.

Salty didn't even look around.

"Ignoring me isn't going to make me go away," Ian continued loudly. "You can't pretend like that didn't just happen."

Still Salty didn't move at all.

"You are really mature, you know that? This is what my daughter does when she's mad at me."

Salty did shrug, then. "I don't got nothin' to say," he said, still without looking at Ian. Then he lay down on the bed. "I'm going to sleep."

Ian felt the corners of his mouth tugging downward. There was not much he could do but lie down himself and try to sleep, though his mind kept sorting through and discarding all kinds of things he could say to try to provoke Salty into responding.

It was midday the next day when they realized it was eerily quiet.

There had been no meal delivery that morning, and Ian had heard Salty's stomach growling. His own stomach was making its own protests but he didn't want to be like Salty, who was standing at the door and trying to see out of the small peephole.

Usually they could hear some kind of activity happening around the compound--the hum of engines or the sound of a TV, maybe some shouting or distant laughter. Now, though, all they could hear was jungle sounds, and Ian was disconcerted.

Had they been left alone?

Things were still awkward with Salty and he wasn't opening up any avenues for conversations so Ian didn't want to be the one who freaked out enough first to say something. From the beginning he'd been the one to get frantic too soon, to do stupid things because he was trying too hard to resist or because he was more scared, so he was determined to not be the first one to crack this time.

The day dragged on interminably. Not only did they not have any food, they didn't have anything to drink either, and by dusk Ian was feeling pretty desperate for water. Still Salty hadn't said much of anything, but all day he'd been restless, going back and forth between the window and the cell door, not even reading his Bible. He had abandoned the radio, perhaps because of its part in what had happened between them yesterday, and Ian tried for a while to find a station, just for the distraction, but that was mostly useless. He'd get something for a few minutes and then something would interfere, and eventually he discarded it.

It surprised Ian, really, that Salty could be so good at not talking, since he'd always been one to talk people's ears off in the clubhouse before. He must have been very angry at Ian, which was an extremely lowering thought. Ian wanted to apologize, maybe just to get Salty talking to him again, but every time he looked over at the back of Salty's head he couldn't quite get the words out.

Gradually the uncomfortable, vague feeling of hunger and thirst persisted and grew until it became something bigger and much more difficult to ignore. It seemed to be quicker this time, and much worse, probably because Ian had still not really eaten properly or regularly since getting sick. All Ian could do was tell himself to wait, that something had to happen, that they couldn't have been abandoned here, that if things were really bad Salty would speak to him.

He must've fallen asleep at some point because he was jolted awake by something that sounded like a gunshot. He couldn't even be sure that he'd heard it except that something had woken him, something very loud, so loud his ears felt like they were still ringing.

Turning his head, he saw that Salty was standing up on his mattress and looking out the window again.

"Was that a gunshot?" Ian said, sitting up quickly, forgetting all about his resolve to not speak until he was spoken to.

"Yeah," Salty said, turning his head slightly. "I woke up earlier because I heard a truck. It was comin' real fast and there was some yelling, and then a gunshot just now. Sounded like a shot gun."

"What do you think is happening?" Ian said.

"I don't know," Salty said.

"Can you see anything out there?" Ian said.

"No, it's all dark."

Some more yelling broke out but it was too far away. Ian began to feel something churning in his stomach around the hunger, a nervous feeling that he tried to banish by taking deeper breaths.

Despite his anxiety, however, when nothing more happened he dozed off again, still sitting up. He woke several times with his neck hurting from sleeping with his head flopped over, but each time he sat up, determined to try to stay awake, since Salty was not sleeping, just standing still as a statue looking out the window like some kind of robot sentinel.

Ian had finally dozed off and flopped all the way over on the mattress when he was abruptly awakened again by the sound of the metal door to the cell creaking open.

Ian sat up in confusion, since it was still dark and the doors were never opened except to deliver food and empty their waste bucket, but then six men with guns came in and began shouting at both of them to get up.

Still groggy from sleep and weak with hunger and thirst, Ian stumbled around, scared and disoriented as he tried to find his t-shirt and pants. Their shoes, which had been confiscated before, were flung at them, and Ian barely had them on before one of the men was grabbing his hands and tying them up again.

"Alright, alright," Ian heard Salty say, and he looked over to see Salty calmly holding his hands behind his back while he was tied up, too.

"Are they taking us somewhere?" Ian shouted to Salty.

"Sure seems that way," Salty said.

"Ugh, fuck you," Ian said, getting upset at Salty's complacent attitude. "What's gonna happen to us?"

"I don't know, Ian," Salty said.

The men were shouting again. Luis was not one of them, Ian realized, though several of them were masked and it was hard to see in the dark. And then it got a lot darker, because someone put a bag over Ian's head again and his stomach lurched at the memory of what it had been like last time he'd had a bag over his head and seeing the man who had been shot to death.

Then they were being propelled out of the cell. Ian stumbled many times, unable to see where he was going, but two of the men gripped his arms roughly and pulled him forward.

Soon they were outside, Ian could tell, by the feel of the ground under his feet. It was hard to breathe in the bag, especially since Ian was panicking and breathing was more difficult anyway, but then he was being shoved into a smaller space that he guessed was a van from the way one of the men shoved his head down so he could duck and climb in.

He felt Salty crash and stumble in after him, propelling directly into Ian's back, and Ian gave a little "Oof" sound.

"That you, Kins?" Salty said.

"What do you think?" Ian said.

"Sorry," Salty said. "It's just a little hard to see."

Ian heard the doors shut and then a motor started. They were jolted around as the van made a few sharp turns. Ian was sure he would be covered in bruises, and on one particularly bumpy turn he hit his head against the wall.

"Are you gettin' thrown around pretty bad?" Salty said.

"This _fucking_ goodwill tour! I wish I'd never come on it," Ian cried, scared and angry.

"Here, try to brace yourself in a corner. I can't find anything to hold on to but I got a foothold here and--" He was interrupted by another jolt, this one causing Ian to bang his head again.

"Ow," Ian said. "Fuck."

He tried to scoot over and feel his way to a corner, and found himself sidling up against Salty.

"Sorry," Ian said.

"That's okay. Here," Salty said, and he hooked one ankle around Ian's, trying to hold them both steady. Ian braced a foot against one wall and held his bound hands against the side of the van, and though they were still jolted around a fair bit, at least he wasn't rolling around and being thrown against the sides like he had been before.

The ride went on and on and Ian's muscles began to protest from the constant bracing and shifting. He was weak with hunger and he could feel that he was getting cramps in various muscles around his body. It was stiflingly hot, too, no air circulating, and Ian was sweating profusely, beginning to feel like he was suffocating. The heat got worse and worse as the ride went on.

Suddenly he felt the van slowing and then it came to a halt. Ian heard the front doors open and close, and then someone came around and Ian heard the back doors open.

There was some more yelling, which Ian didn't understand until he felt the unmistakable butt of a rifle prodding him forward, and he reluctantly crawled forward, hearing Salty's heavy breathing as he followed.

They were walking over pavement, Ian suspected, since it was hard and even, and then they went into some kind of building that felt slightly cooler but damp, and he heard the sound of another metal door.

He decided he would try one more time to plead his case. "Please," he said, "you're making a big mistake. This could all be so easy, just--let us go and we'll--I swear, I'll pay you anything--"

But none of his words seemed to have any effect, and he heard another door shut behind them, and then it was dark, and the men went away.

"Salty?" Ian wheezed.

"Yeah," Salty croaked.

"Did they just leave us here?"

"It seems like it, doesn't it?"

Ian felt a lot like crying. He tried as hard as he could to swallow down the feeling, but it was there, right in his throat. They were never going to escape this. They were either going to die of dehydration or they were going to be killed. Escape seemed impossible, and even if they could somehow break out of here, it would probably be impossible to hide.

He inhaled sharply, a shuddering breath that sounded like a cross between a wheeze and a hiccup.

"You okay?" Salty said.

"No," Ian said miserably. "I just want to go home. And I want this stupid fucking bag off my head!" He shook his head side to side violently, succeeding only in making himself feel dizzy.

"Maybe we could get them off," Salty said.

"I doubt it," Ian said.

"We can try. Here, see if you can get this bag off if I put my head next to your hands."

Ian heard Salty shuffling vaguely behind him and to his left, so he turned, moving toward him, and then knocked his teeth into the top of Salty's head trying to gauge where he was.

"Ow," Salty said.

"Sorry, but I can't exactly see what I'm doing," Ian said defensively.

"I know, but that hurt," Salty said. "Here, try if you can to see what's holding it on."

Ian felt Salty bend forward, so he tried as best he could to feel for Salty's neck.

There was some kind of cord tied in a loose knot around it. Feeling it made Ian think maybe it wouldn't be so hard to get off, so he set to work trying to untangle it with his fingers.

It was maddening work, especially trying to do it blind, and Ian cursed and nearly gave up several times, but each time Salty said something to convince him to keep trying, waiting patiently behind Ian with his head bowed so Ian could reach him with his hands still tied. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, he was able to work the bag off of Salty's head.

"Thanks," Salty said. "You did it, Kins."

"Now do me," Ian pleaded.

"Okay, you gotta bend over behind me so I can get my hands up to try," Salty said.

So Ian did, leaning sideways awkwardly, Salty feeling his way. 

"My fingers are too big and they've got this rope so tight," Salty said.

"You can't leave me like this," Ian said.

"I know, I know, I'm trying," Salty said.

It took nearly twice as long as it had for Ian but finally Salty was able to drag the bag over Ian's face, the rough fabric scraping his nose and cheeks.

Ian blinked. It was dark but there were some high slits for windows, covered by screens, and there was moisture pooled in the corners. It didn't smell very good but then it wasn't that much worse than the cell they'd been in before. This one didn't have any furniture, however, and was not much more than a small cube with a low ceiling. But at least he could see.

He hobbled over to one side, looking for a dry patch on the floor, and then sank down, leaning his shoulders back against the wall.

"Are you holding up?" Salty asked slowly.

Ian looked over at him. He was standing with his feet planted a little apart, his hands still tied behind him, of course, and his face a little red, but he still looked strong and invincible and complacent. Ian, by contrast, felt like he was going to die. He ached everywhere, he was sweaty and dirty, and he was so thirsty.

"I'm sorry," Ian said, sounding ragged even to his own ears.

Salty blinked at him. "What for?" he said finally.

"For--before," Ian said. "When I--when you hugged me and--and you kissed my neck and I really liked it, but I was too much of a chicken shit to let you keep going."

Salty was still staring at him.

"The truth is," Ian said, his voice cracking a little as his eyes watered. "I could use a hug right now."

"Ian," Salty said quietly, and his eyes got that sad, naked look in them again, full of forgiveness and embarrassing generosity. "Wish you hadn't waited 'til my hands were tied to ask for one."

Ian gave a snotty little laugh, and Salty walked the few steps over to sit down next to Ian so that their shoulders were touching. Ian couldn't help it, all he wanted to do was rest his head against Salty's shoulder, so he did. And when he felt Salty lean into him a little, he closed his eyes.

They sat like that for a long time. It got hotter and hotter, and all Ian could do was swallow occasionally to try to trick his brain into think he was drinking something. The hum of insects outside increased, but there were no other sounds, no voices and no cars. Ian tried to concentrate on the sound of Salty's breathing next to him, clinging to the slow rhythm of it, knowing it was the only thing keeping him from completely breaking down.

At one point Ian began to feel light-headed, the heat and exhaustion draining all his rational thoughts and filters away.

"Are we going to get out of here?" he asked Salty, trying to resist the urge to just give up and slump on the ground.

Salty chuckled, though it was a dry, raspy sound. "You have a knack for asking me questions I don't know the answer to," he said.

"But what do you think, really," Ian continued hazily. "Is this--the end, or something? Is this how it all shakes out, everything we worked for and everything we thought we knew about life?"

Salty was quiet for a long time, and Ian wondered again whether he'd said what he'd been thinking out loud.

When Salty finally did answer, his voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away. "No," he said. "I don't think this is the end for us. I think it's just the beginning."

Ian marveled deliriously at the confidence in Salty's voice.

"How do you know?" he said. 

He felt Salty shrug a little bit. "I don't think I did know until just now."

"What changed your mind?" Ian asked.

Salty paused again, the silence drawing out for a long time between them. And then he turned, speaking his answer into Ian's hair. "You," he said simply.

Ian raised his head, looking up into Salty's eyes. "That makes no sense," he said slowly.

"I'll tell you something," Salty said. "I've been praying, every day and every night. I've been asking God for a sign, something to let us know we aren't alone here."

Ian waited for Salty's next words, saw his eyes go down to the ground, and then back up to look Ian in the eyes, and Ian had a strange feeling of being lifted up slightly, of everything else around them fading away.

"The other day," Salty continued, "when I saw you dancing out of nowhere--I don't know, I just felt my whole chest fill up with something good. And I just felt like God was giving me a reason to keep believing, and it was right there in you."

Ian didn't know what to say to that. He could only stare at Salty, wondering at the way his mind worked, that he could see something like a miracle in Ian's whims, whims that were mostly selfish and impulsive and unworthy of the meaning Salty was giving them.

"And I felt lucky," Salty said, "that here in the middle of nowhere, so far from home, trapped in a prison cell and living like an animal--God gave me you to help me through it and remind me that good things still exist and there's a reason to keep hoping that everything will turn out okay. And that's why I wanted to--to love on you."

Ian didn't believe in God, really, or at any rate not with the kind of unabashed conviction that Salty did. But despite the illusory, insensible logic of Salty's words, there was something comforting, more comforting than Ian expected. The things he had felt about Salty throughout this ordeal--all the annoyance, guilt, anger, embarrassment and awe--had kept Ian in touch with the part of himself that was real, that existed in the minds of other people. Even, or perhaps especially, in those moments when he had wanted to punch Salty in the face for being so fucking clueless, he had felt a little less like he was losing himself, as if all the things Salty made him feel were the things that had kept him dangling just above the reaches of oblivion. 

Suddenly Ian knew, with deep conviction, that there likely wasn't anyone else who could've helped him in this same way. Perhaps because underneath those feelings lay something deeper, something he had never felt before in his life and never imagined was possible.

This revelation happened in an instant, all while looking at Salty's stupid, idiotic, _beautiful_ face, and Ian was frightened again, but this time it was because he had realized how much Salty meant to him.

Maybe it was the same, Ian thought feverishly. Maybe Salty thinking that Ian was a gift from God to help him get through a bad time was the same as Ian seeing Salty and finding himself, finding hope. Maybe that's all that God was, really.

He pressed the side of his face to Salty's chest, leaning into him as best he could with his hands tied.

"Jarrod," he said tightly. "I'm so sorry."

"Ian," Salty said, his voice so gentle and terribly _loving_ , and hearing it flooded Ian with that feeling again, the feeling that just a short while ago he would've identified as annoyance and embarrassment, the feelings that every one of Salty's unexpected and unconventional actions had provoked in him before. But Ian knew now that it wasn't any of those things. It was something deeper, much more visceral and disconcerting, a kind of tenderness and desire to protect Salty and his overly generous feelings. 

"Don't be sorry," Salty said. "We'll get through this and--things will be different between the two of us, between us and the world."

"Tell me," Ian said urgently, "tell me what it'll be like when we get out of here."

"What, like, when we get back home?" Salty said, his voice low above Ian's head.

"Yeah," Ian said.

"Well," Salty said, "you're gonna call me Jarrod, and every time I hear you say my name I'll feel like a million dollars."

"You don't like being called Salty?" Ian asked.

"I like it fine, but that's what people call my dad and my brother and every other guy in my family," Salty said.

"Jarrod," Ian said. "Jarrod, Jarrod, Jarrod."

Salty smiled, lit up with happiness, and seeing it made Ian feel deliriously happy in spite of everything.

"What else," Ian said. "Tell me another thing."

Salty paused for a moment, thinking. "We'll take a trip together," he said. "We'll go somewhere on our own, somewhere far away, not because someone dragged us there but just because we wanted to. We'll be safe and we'll be together, somewhere no one can find us. And there you'll let me kiss you everywhere and you'll teach me more dancing and we can camp out under the stars with no walls and no ceiling and you'll let me love you six ways to Sunday. And when you say Jarrod, just like you did now--"

"Jarrod," Ian said again, willing to say it a thousand times.

"Yeah, like that, like you need me, like everything hurts and I'm the only one that can make it better, when you say it like that--baby, I'll be so good to you, I'll make you feel so good."

"You promise?" Ian said, curling into Salty even more, so grateful to Salty for taking them both away from this miserable place just with his words and his voice.

"Ian, I promise," Salty said, turning to kiss the the top of Ian's head.

"What else," Ian prodded, wanting Salty to keep talking and talking until everything around them disappeared.

Salty was silent again for a little while.

"Everyone will wonder what it was like for us down here," he said eventually, his voice very low. "They'll have reporters askin' us questions, not just the guys we know but national TV. Maybe we'll be on 20/20 or Good Morning America. And they'll want us to tell everything."

"Will we go on talk shows together?"

"If you want," Salty said, and Ian could hear the smile in his voice. "But," he continued, sounding serious again, "no matter what we say, no matter how hard I try to explain, no one will understand what it was like for us. No one'll know how I felt when we was separated and I didn't know what they'd done with you, or how I felt when they brought you in after you'd been sick and you looked like you was dead. They won't know how worried I was and how I almost--" He broke off, not finishing his sentence, and Ian heard Salty swallow hard. "No one'll understand how even after, when they got some food in you and you weren't gonna die from bein' sick, I was still scared because you'd just lay there like you _wanted_ to die."

Ian lifted his head then and looked up at Salty.

"And no one'll know," Salty continued, "how seein' you lay there made me want to take care of you, 'cause you seemed so thin and little and all curled up, and I wanted to pick you up so I could sit you in my lap and feed you myself."

They stared at each other for a minute, Ian not knowing how to react to all these things Salty was saying and too confused in his head to think of anything to say in return.

"You're so pretty," Salty whispered, almost as if he were talking to himself.

Ian closed his eyes, so tired and miserable and yet feeling as if this were somehow the most profound moment of his life. All he could do was lean against Salty, hoping that Salty knew how much it meant to Ian that they were together.

He was too exhausted to say much of anything after that and as the hours ticked by it only got hotter and hotter. 

Salty had been quiet for a long time when suddenly he slumped over, unconscious.

"Salty," Ian cried desperately, unable to touch him with his hands tied. He knelt next to Salty's head and saw how sweaty and red Salty's face was, how there was a white scum lining his lips because his mouth was too dry. Ian had thought Salty was handling everything better than Ian was, but now he realized that was not the case at all.

Ian kept saying Salty's name and trying to nudge him awake, unable to cry even though he could feel that clawing feeling of despair in his chest. Eventually he was able to awaken Salty, but though Salty was conscious he was mostly inert and just kept saying that he was glad Ian was there. Ian lay down next to him on the ground, trying to say things to keep Salty there, to keep his mind own from wandering too much.

Maybe the heat would be too much this time, Ian thought hazily, especially after having no water for such a long time and the stiflingly hot car ride they'd taken earlier in the day, which had already caused him to lose a lot of fluids. His mouth was so dry, his lips tearing and bleeding from how he was worrying them with his teeth, and he got so stiff he didn't think he could stand up even if he wanted to. 

Things got very blurry after that. Ian was delirious enough that he couldn't tell where he was, hearing himself speak but unable to understand his own words. He was pretty sure that at some point he wet himself, but soon he was so dehydrated that he was drifting in and out of consciousness, waking up at certain points to total darkness, and then frantically listening for Salty's wheezy breaths. It was always a relief to isolate the sound, though Ian was afraid that he might wake up at a certain point and not hear them.

He had no idea how many hours passed before he suddenly became aware of people filling up the room. Ian opened his eyes, but his vision was blurry and it hurt to move. There were some men in uniforms lifting him up and lots of voices, people talking and shouting questions at him. Ian strained to listen for the sound of Salty's breathing but he couldn't hear, and then he was being carried out and loaded into another van of some kind. He wanted to scream and run away, confused and terrified that he would be taken yet again to some other place and he couldn't see Salty. But he was so weak, and he kept shouting for Salty but no sound came out of his throat and no one seemed to understand him.

*

They were airlifted to a hospital in Caracas, where they were given private rooms and copious security. Ian spent most of the first 12 hours recovering his normal brain function, only vaguely aware of flying in a helicopter and the fleet of medical workers and police who were escorting them.

He did wake up at one point in the hospital room to see that Tess and his father were sitting there next to his bed. He'd never seen his dad cry before, but he saw it that morning when he opened his eyes and said hi, his voice hoarse with disuse.

Tess cried too and got Rian and Jack and his mom on the phone so that Ian could say hi to them. Ian teared up himself when he heard their voices and told them he would be back soon. After they finished talking Tess tried to get him to tell her what had happened to him, but Ian was unable to speak about most of it, finding it difficult to relate many of the events without feeling as if he were coming across as too dramatic. Now that it was over, it was easy to feel as if he never should've been scared, that he had never been in any real danger, and talking about the misery and boredom of it seemed unnecessary and self-important. 

So he listened to Tess recount every minute of her ordeal in waiting for news about him, and how frustratingly redneck and indiscreet Salty's family and agent had been, since they'd all been forced to convene together for briefings and the decision-making process. It wasn't that he didn't sympathize, knowing that it must have been awful, especially for their children, to not know whether he was even still alive after that video with the newspaper had been released, but at the same time he perversely resented her for not showing similar restraint in downplaying the direness of the situation given that now everything could go back to normal. If he could get through having _actually_ been kidnapped without needing to make a big deal of it and tell a big sob story, why couldn't she do the same? None of it mattered other than that he was back, and they could all carry on with their lives.

He found out later that they'd been missing for about two and a half weeks. It had seemed much longer to Ian, and certainly his body seemed to feel that it had been much longer, since he'd lost a lot of weight and muscle mass and was suffering from some nutrient deficiencies. They tested him for diseases and parasites, and although he'd picked up some new and interesting intestinal flora and had some infected bug bites that he'd scratched too hard, there was nothing too serious.

Apparently an organization called ASI Global Response had been responsible for identifying their kidnappers as a crime organization with strong ties to several drug cartels. While they had engaged in negotiations they'd also set out investigating Ian and Salty's actual whereabouts and tried to orchestrate a drop-off and exchange that would result in arrests. Unfortunately, they'd been misled by the kidnappers about the drop-off location and though they'd been able to make some arrests it had taken another day for them to find Ian and Salty.

Ian was told not to expect justice; though they'd arrested a few men, the corruption in the government meant that the justice system was extremely flawed, and they weren't even certain that the men they'd apprehended were men who had actually been involved or if they had been mere scapegoats.

Ian found he didn't much care about any of that; all he wanted was to go home, and after two days in the hospital MLB chartered two private planes to take them back to their respective homes--Ian to Dallas and Salty to Florida. All the other players on the goodwill tour had been evacuated from Venezuela immediately after the kidnapping.

Ian didn't see Salty at all for those first hours. When he'd first started feeling a little more like himself he began to doubt that a lot of what had passed between them had actually happened. He must have been in very dire straits emotionally and mentally to have started thinking about upending everything in his life so that he and Salty could be together. He tried to sort through hazy recollections of the things Salty had said to him that last day, things that had seemed to carry him up and out of himself and the hopelessness and misery he'd been feeling, things that had made him believe that there was something bigger and more important in life than he'd ever imagined. 

But now, confronted with the realities of his life, that feeling seemed very remote and far away. He'd been crazy. They'd both been crazy, driven to strange emotional extremes by the stress of their situation. It was easy enough, when cut off from everything familiar, to cling to the one thing that reminded you of your real life and who you were as a person, and for Ian, that had been Salty, and for Salty that had probably been Ian.

The night before he was to be released to go home, Tess left early, escorted by security, to get some sleep at the hotel before their flight the next day, and his dad fell asleep soon after in the chair next to the window, unwilling to let Ian out of his sight. Ian, who had been sleeping for nearly two full days, waking up only to try to swallow solid food or go to the bathroom or agree on the wording of his official statement to the police and to the press, suddenly found that he couldn't sleep anymore.

He tossed and turned, feeling restless and uncomfortable and depressed, and finally he threw the covers back, determined to get up and walk a little. 

The hallway was quiet, since it was late at night. There were flowers in elaborate vases standing on decorative tables and colorful paintings on the walls. Ian understood this to be a very expensive private hospital, the sort only celebrities and government officials were admitted to, but it was eerie, very different from any hospital Ian had ever been to.

He wandered down the hallway, glancing into the rooms and telling himself that he was merely idly wondering which one Salty was in. He didn't know what he would say to Salty if he did see him, but thinking of Salty made him feel something, at least, when everything else but the talk he'd had with his kids over the phone had left him feeling numb.

When he reached the last room on the left he glanced inside and then stopped abruptly.

It was Salty's room. There was a dim light on but it was mostly dark, and Salty looked like he was asleep. But there was a woman--his wife, probably--asleep on the bed next to him, and they were holding hands, her long dark hair draped over his chest.

They looked very close, the very picture of a devoted couple reunited after a long separation.

Ian backed away quietly and went back to his room. He knew then for certain that he'd gone crazy, locked away in that cell with Salty. Having time to think didn't mean you would find the right answers, and desperation didn't tell you who you really were after all. Ian vowed to remember that for the rest of his life.

*

The next day was the day they were supposed to leave. Ian's dad went to get coffee and breakfast, leaving Ian to shave and get dressed himself before Tess arrived and they took a cab to the airport together.

Ian was at the sink in his bathroom wiping his face off when he sensed someone at the door.

He turned, and there was Salty. He was beaming at Ian, his face open and happy, like he couldn't stop smiling even if he tried, and he looked so handsome. Ian hadn't been able to see clearly in the dark the night before, but Salty's face was clean-shaven--the first time Ian had seen it that way in years, maybe since before Salty had been traded away from the Rangers. He was thin but he looked fresh, young, hopeful, none of the anxiety and determination and hurt that Ian had seen almost daily during their ordeal showing on his face now. Looking at him felt almost physically painful in Ian's chest.

He turned away from Salty, looking back at the mirror. "So they let you get up," he said.

"Yeah, I haven't had a minute to come find you," Salty said, coming toward him and reaching his arms out.

"Stop," Ian said abruptly.

Salty froze, and then his hands dropped to his sides, the smile fading.

"I just--my dad's gonna be back any minute," Ian said.

"So?" Salty said. "Can I meet him?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Ian said, picking up a comb.

Salty stood there watching Ian examine his hair in the mirror.

"Look," Ian said, lowering the comb and turning back to Salty with a sigh. "I just want to put all this behind me. It's been really strange and I think--it really messed with my head."

"What do you mean?" Salty said, blinking.

"I mean I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't tell anyone about the stuff I--said or did or--anything like that."

Salty was silent. "So we're back to this, are we?" he said after a while.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ian practically shouted, flinging the comb down into the sink.

"I think you know exactly what I'm talking about," Salty said.

"We were in a bad situation," Ian said heatedly. "I was desperate. So were you," he continued, in a spirit of trying to be generous, letting Salty know that Ian did not blame him. "We should just agree to let what happened lie. I don't think--I mean, we're back to the real world now."

"You're so scared, Ian," Salty said. "Even now, when there's nothing to be scared of anymore but yourself."

"Shut up," Ian said, wanting to avoid Salty's eyes. "Just stop. It's embarrassing."

There was another long silence.

"I just came to say hi and see how you're doing," Salty said. 

"I'm fine," Ian said.

Salty turned to go. Ian tried to tell himself he was relieved, that seeing Salty walk away was the right thing, the best thing for both of them. But then Salty turned abruptly in the doorway.

"I gotta say this," he said. "I get it. Everyone thinks I don't, but I do. You're ashamed of me, of people thinkin' you're friends with me or maybe something more. I just want you to know that I'm not ashamed of myself or any of the things I said or did. You can do what you want; I can't stop you. But I realized something while I was in there and I think you did too. I saw it in your face, in your eyes when you looked at me. And knowing that you want to run away from it--well, that breaks my fuckin' heart, Ian."

When Ian finally looked up, Salty was gone, the doorway empty, and all that was left for Ian to do was pick up the comb again and try to make himself look like he was glad to be going home. 

*

Through the next few months, Ian tried to remind himself every day that what had transpired when he'd been desperate and isolated didn't mean anything. By the time spring training started a few months later, however, he was still having a hard time convincing himself or anyone else that he hadn't changed fundamentally.

The first few weeks after the kidnapping had been a blur. He hadn't wanted to see anyone for weeks; he refused all interviews and ignored most phone calls, texts and emails, and was unable to muster up any enthusiasm for working out and getting ready for the season. He canceled all of his offseason charity and goodwill appearances and became a hermit, going out only when he absolutely had to and trying to disguise himself as best he could when he did.

For a little while Tess had been patient with him, taking on a lot of extra responsibility and pretty much doing whatever Ian asked her to do, explicitly or implicitly. He heard her talking to people on the phone--his agent, Rangers people, his teammates, even her friends, making excuses for him, saying things like, "I think Ian just needs time. He hasn't talked to anyone about it. I know, right? I keep telling him he needs to. If he won't talk to me he should at least talk to a professional, work out whatever it is that's still holding him back from being able to move on. But I think he will when he's ready. He's always been like that. He only does something if he's ready to." 

He wanted to roll his eyes at these speeches, telling himself that of course he'd be ready for the season. There was nothing wrong with him. He'd come back and he didn't have any physical scars to show for what happened to him, and when all was said and done his kidnappers hadn't shown near the brutality that everyone seemed to expect. Sure, he'd seen a man killed in front of his eyes and he'd been locked up in a small cell and he'd been extremely ill, but he'd lived through it and was none the worse for the wear.

So every day he had told himself that he would do better tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would start caring. Tomorrow he would get up and go to the gym and call his agent and pick Rian up from kindergarten and take Jack outside to play catch.

The problem was that he couldn't shake the feeling of apathy. At least three times he'd made Rian cry because he snapped at her when she wouldn't stop bothering him to play with her, and while he knew on an intellectual level that he was at fault he couldn't muster the ability to be other than grateful when Tess or the babysitter took Rian away and he could have some peace.

Several of his friends and teammates didn't stop trying to get him to come out with them, inviting him to go out for a drink, or to some new restaurant or club. They invited him on hunting trips and to basketball and hockey games and even on couples vacations, but Ian had turned them all down, extremely reluctant to give anyone the opportunity to ask about how he was doing or what exactly had happened, or even catch a guy looking at him with concern, wondering if he was able to enjoy himself.

Tess started to wear down. She got tired of covering for him, tired of taking responsibility for everything, tired of excusing his listless and unpleasant behavior just because something kind of shitty had happened to him. He wasn't doing anything to help himself get over it, she said. He wasn't even trying to move on, to deal with what happened. He wasn't making any effort to go _back to normal._

But what was normal? Ian had been certain, when he'd seen Salty and his wife in that hospital bedroom, that he knew exactly what normal meant, but now, months later, he wasn't so sure. Here he was back in his familiar house with his wife and his children, sought after by his friends and colleagues, and everything should have felt normal. It didn't, though, and Ian couldn't shake the uneasy feeling of having been grafted to a life that wasn't really his. He was angry at himself for not being able to feel normal but he was also angry at what had happened to him and the way it was continuing to make him question things that should've withstood such a test--his livelihood, his family, his own sense of who he was.

They started fighting a lot, or rather Tess started arguing with him and Ian mostly just ignored her or said something cruel to get her to shut up and then left to go for a drive in his car. Several times he left her in tears, and he hated himself for not being able to do better with her and with his whole family, but all he wanted to do, all he felt capable of doing, really, was to put as much emotional and physical distance between himself and her as possible.

The thing that got Ian most riled up was hearing about Salty. Salty gave interviews all over the place in the weeks following their return. Ian watched and read a few of them, and whenever someone asked Salty about Ian and why he wasn't willing to give any interviews, Salty would say things like, "Ian had a rough time. I mean, it was rough for both of us, but things happened to him that didn't happen to me and he should be the one to talk about them if he chooses to. But, you know, he was there for me and I tried to be there for him, and there's no doubt in my mind we got each other through it. Something like this--you know, it changes your life. And all you can do is try to keep going. He's probably just tryin' the best he knows how."

That, of course, led to a lot of speculation that Ian had been sexually assaulted by the kidnappers, and that Salty had witnessed it. Ian felt an almost uncontrollable rage when he realized this. He knew it would damage his image, especially in the eyes of the baseball world, and public denial would only make it worse. He'd just have to wait until everyone moved on and forgot about the whole thing.

And everyone did. He and Salty were a big story for a couple of weeks, making the national news, and there were reporters gathered on the street in front of Ian's property, his whole family hounded for interviews. So it was for a few days, and then they left, and people pretty much forgot about it. If only Ian could have done the same.

Salty did not make any effort to contact Ian, of course. Ian told himself that that was what he wanted. Why did he snatch his phone up every time it rang hoping to see Salty's name lighting it up? He had to try to eradicate the part of himself that was apparently still stuck in the jungle in Venezuela.

With Spring Training drawing near, Ian was forced to have some very frank and unpleasant conversations with first his agent and then Rangers management. He knew he had to shape up and that he was not ready for the baseball season, so they decided that especially since his ankle was always bothering him anyway, he could start the year on the DL as long as he made good faith efforts to get in shape and start taking care of himself again. He was told he had extenuating circumstances because of what had happened to him but that the club was going to be forced to take action if he continued to violate the terms of his contract.

They also strongly suggested that he start seeing a therapist, which was another way of saying that if he didn't, there would be unpleasant ramifications.

How could he see a therapist? Especially a sports psychologist who had a background in baseball and strong ties to most of the baseball world? How could Ian be honest about the fact that no, he hadn't been sexually assaulted, and that it might even have been easier if he had, because then he'd have _someone_ to blame for the fact that he had apparently become gay and was in love with another guy--a guy for whom he'd almost been ready to leave everything behind?

So he went to therapy but was largely uncommunicative and insolent, outright laughing at some of the questions the therapist asked and shrugging noncommittally in answer to all the others.

He told Tess he wanted to go to Spring Training alone, that he needed the space.

"And," he said slowly, dreading the outburst that would surely follow, "I think we should think about making this an official separation."

She protested vehemently at first, convinced that he wasn't in a place to make such a decision. But when Ian said he could see she wasn't happy in their marriage either, she couldn't really argue with him.

They didn't tell the kids and nothing was finalized, but Ian knew it was over. He flew to Arizona himself and checked into a hotel.

A few local media guys wanted to ask him questions, and since Ian knew he had to bite the bullet sometime, he decided to grant Jeff Wilson an interview.

They sat down in the clubhouse one morning shortly after pitchers and catchers reported and Ian flipped his cap backwards, lounging in his swivel chair and trying not to act like he was insanely nervous.

"So, Ian, thanks for the time."

Ian nodded, biting at one of his nails.

"How are you feeling?"

Ian shrugged. "Great," he said.

"Physically, I mean. How's the ankle?"

"Honestly, it's been bothering me for years. Just decided to give it a little extra rest so that I can hopefully play through the rest of the season without problems. I don't know if you heard," he said sarcastically, "but I had kind of a rough offseason and I got sick several times. Pretty much depleted all the important stuff, so it's just taking me a while to feel good, feel right."

"There's been talk about moving you to left field for a couple of years now. Is this the year it finally happens?"

"You'll have to ask Wash that question. I don't fill out the lineup card."

"How do you feel about moving to left field?"

"Anything that helps the club, I'm 100% in favor of," Ian said. "That's always been my priority. And when I signed my contract we--JD and Thad and everyone, we talked about how I could contribute long-term. If that means playing left field..." He shrugged again. "Fine with me."

"Can you talk about the kidnapping a little or is that off-limits?"

There it was, five questions in. "Honestly there's not much to tell," he said, digging out his prepared answer. "I mean, yeah, there were points when I started wondering if we'd ever get out. But thinking back on it--it is what it is. I know that a lot of kidnappings happen in the world and most of the time they just come down to business transactions. Not to downplay it or make light of it or whatever, but it happened, and thanks to a lot of people, we were able to get out of there and come home safe. I'm glad it wasn't worse, because it could've been."

"You didn't give any interviews about it for a long time. Why is that?"

"I just needed some time with my family. My wife and my kids. They were glad to have me back and I had to get healthy again. I wanted to stay focused on that."

"Salty gave some interviews where he said that things happened to you that were worse than what happened to him."

Ian nodded, not volunteering any response.

"Do you have any comment about that?"

"I mean, I got pretty sick at one point. Salty--Saltalamacchia didn't. That's pretty much all there is to that."

"He made it sound like you went through some pretty traumatic experiences."

Ian shrugged yet again. "I thought it was pretty much the same for both of us. There were things that--I mean, I definitely wouldn't want to do any of it again. But I don't think I had it worse. Maybe he thinks he's tougher than I am." He smiled to indicate that he was kidding.

"I saw Salty yesterday and he mentioned that a lot of what kept him--"

"Sorry," Ian interrupted, his heart rate increasing slightly, "you what?"

"Yesterday," Jeff said. "I saw him and he answered a few questions--"

"But you were here yesterday," Ian said stupidly.

"I think he just got here yesterday, actually," Jeff said, blinking behind his glasses.

"Salty's here?"

"Well, in Phoenix, yes."

"Why?" Ian said.

Jeff frowned, looking down at his phone as if to confirm something, but then thinking better of it. "He signed a one-year deal with the Padres on Monday."

Ian felt like he was under water. He knew seeing Salty again was inevitable but for some reason it hadn't occurred to him that Salty was a free agent and could very well have signed to a Cactus League team. He'd thought he had more time to adjust to the idea of seeing him again.

"Sorry, do you mind if we finish this later?" he heard himself say to Jeff. "I can't really--I have to make--I have to go."

"Oh," Jeff said. "Okay, how is tomor--"

"That's great. Get in touch tomorrow. Sorry, man, I just--you know how it is."

Ian stood up abruptly, giving Jeff an apologetic look and then bolting out of the clubhouse, feeling claustrophobic. He slammed the door onto the field open with undue force and walked away from the entrance area quickly, pacing back and forth and feeling his heart racing.

It was a panic attack, of course. Ian recognized all the signs; he'd had them as a child sometimes and, of course, his last one had started when he'd first realized he'd been kidnapped. But this was the first he'd had since he'd come back. In fact, it was the most worked up he'd felt since that harrowing and painful last day, when they'd been suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion, lying next to each other in that narrow corridor between life and death and saying things to each other that they could not have meant, things that came from compromised bodies and minds.

Ian felt almost as if he were back there, the intensity of his feelings threatening to overcome him--an irrepressible maelstrom of fear and anticipation and desperation and hope. And he wondered how, after months of nothing, of feeling numb even to the pain he was inflicting on the people closest to him, suddenly just the news that Salty was close by had the power to reduce him to this.

He decided to jog around the field several times, unable to keep still and think about going back inside. He pulled his hood up over his head and started trying to breathe regularly, trying to use the controlled and monotonous action of running to help himself calm down.

It worked, to an extent, and by the time he made it around the practice field six times he was sweaty and his mind felt more comfortably blank. He kept running, though at a slightly slower pace, and began to cautiously think about what he could do to try to prevent this from happening again.

Eventually, after his ninth time around, he came to the conclusion that he had to try to see Salty to somehow resolve whatever apparently unresolved issues he had with what they'd been through together and how he was failing to deal with it.

He ran a few more laps around the field and by that time he was exhausted, having already done a full workout earlier in the day. His hands were shaking a little bit when he got his phone out to text Salty.

_Heard you were in town. Need to talk to you._

He checked his phone obsessively over the next few hours but didn't receive any reply from Salty.

Finally, at about eight o'clock that night, his phone buzzed.

 _About what_ , Salty replied.

Ian tried not to feel stung by this curtness, knowing he'd brought it on himself. He didn't know the answer to that, really, except that he needed to see Salty on his own terms rather than on someone else's. A tiny part of him whispered that, apart from the kidnapping itself, everything he'd ever said or done with Salty had been on his own terms, and that he was being selfish, but he tried to disregard it.

 _About the stuff you've been saying about me to the media_ , Ian texted back, using the first legitimate reason he could think of.

The next answer came more quickly.

 _Fine. Where and when_ , Salty wrote.

Ian texted Salty his hotel and room number and then paced around his room, waiting nervously.

When he heard the knock on his door about half an hour later he jumped, despite expecting it.

His hands were shaking again as he reached out to open the door.

Salty was, of course, standing on the other side of it. He was taller than Ian remembered him being, and had gained a lot more weight in the months since they'd seen each other in person. He wasn't smiling, but he was wearing a bright yellow polo shirt that seemed to belie the blank look on his face. And he was clean-shaven, his hair cropped close to his head.

Ian stood back from the door and gestured wordlessly for Salty to come inside. Salty walked by him and into the room, and then he turned around, crossing his arms.

"What's up?" he said.

Ian swallowed.

"You know everyone thinks I was, like, gang-raped because of you, right?" Ian said, stalling as he tried to figure out how to get at what he really wanted by asking Salty to come over.

"I never said anything like that," Salty said.

"Well that's how everyone took what you did say," Ian said.

Salty shrugged. "I can't take responsibility for that. You know how words get twisted around and a big deal gets made out of everything."

"You should've just kept your big fucking mouth shut," Ian said.

"Why?" Salty said. "If you'd just taken a few minutes of your time to explain no one would've needed to dream up nothin' about no gang rape."

"It's nobody's business," Ian said loudly.

"Maybe not, but ain't it natural that people would be curious about what happened? They wanna know because they care, and they was scared for us."

"No, they just want some juicy details about a crime committed on someone."

"Yeah, well, I know thinkin' the worst of people is somethin' you're real good at."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ian said, taken aback at this direct attack.

Salty set his jaw. "Nothing," he said.

They stood there in silence, the seconds ticking by.

Finally, Salty spoke. "Well, I'm sorry if something I said gave people the wrong idea. I was just tryin' not to speak for you."

"That's not good enough," Ian said automatically.

"What more do you want from me?" Salty said, beginning to look impatient. His whole demeanor during this conversation was different from how Ian was used to seeing Salty. He was being very short with Ian and seemed detached. It made Ian feel uneasy, as if something he'd always trusted unquestioningly, even unconsciously, were crumbling under his feet. Looking at Salty now he could barely believe he was the same person who had shared that dirty little holding cell with him in Venezuela. That person had seemed much more like a very enthusiastic and forgiving puppy, all scruffy and sweaty and smelly but also a little helpless and wide-eyed and trusting, always willing to play and to be amused, and hurt by being ignored. This Salty was clean and neat and impatient, making Ian feel like he was wasting Salty's time.

"Just--don't, like, don't talk about it anymore," Ian blustered.

Salty rolled his eyes slightly. "Fine," he said. "I won't. Is that all? Was that what you needed to talk to me about?"

"Well--well, I guess, yeah," Ian said. "Well I also--just wanted to--to find out if it would be weird. Seeing you again."

Salty frowned a little, shrugging his shoulders again. "So is it?"

 _Yes_ , Ian wanted to shout, though not in the way he had thought it would be. He'd pictured having to be the one to be impatient and cold to Salty, to fight every impulse he had of running to him and letting Salty pick him up and hold him tightly as if they could never be parted again.

"I guess not," Ian said. "Even if we did go through some really weird shit together."

Salty gave him a look.

"Don't you have any--aren't you messed up by it at all?" Ian said explosively, angry that Salty could just stand there like he'd just slipped right back into normal life, like it hadn't been life-changing. "You're not even--everything is so easy for you, isn't it? You just have this one-track mind and nothing but what's right in front of you even matters, does it?"

Salty gave a mirthless laugh, shaking his head. "I don't have to listen to this." He abruptly began making for the door, brushing past Ian.

"Wait--" Ian cried involuntarily, reaching out for Salty and grasping a fistful of his shirt. "You can't just--"

"Why can't I?" Salty thundered, turning around, his eyes snapping with anger, and Ian recoiled. He had never seen Salty like that.

"We're not locked in anymore," Salty continued. "I can go out that fuckin' door any time I want. I don't have to sit here and see you torture yourself and me for no good reason and--and pick fights with me when all I ever wanted was to help you through it--help us both get through it."

"That's all you wanted?" Ian said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. "Really?"

Salty shook his head again. "You're really--you really have the balls to ask _me_ what I want?"

"I think I have a right to know," Ian said.

"Really? The most confused person I've ever met is telling me that he has a right to know what I wanted? All I've gotten from you from the very beginning--from the first day I met you, when I first joined the team--all you ever give me is these fuckin' mixed messages. You blow hot and cold. One minute you're laughing with me and the next you're ignoring me. And one minute you--you lean on me and let me say things I never thought I'd say to anyone and the next you're telling me--" He made an incoherent sound of frustration. "It drives me fuckin' _crazy_ , Ian. You don't know your own fuckin' mind and you think you deserve to know mine?"

Ian flinched. He knew that what Salty was saying was true. He was so confused and so desperately unhappy and all he'd wanted was something or someone to blame. Salty had been that, really the only physical manifestation of the kidnapping experience on which Ian could focus his anger and confusion, but he hadn't ever felt good about doing that because he knew, deep down, that he really had no one to blame but himself.

"Okay," Salty said, turning to go again, and Ian realized he'd just been standing there blankly staring at Salty, his thoughts in a jumble and his feelings filling up every bit of empty space in the room like some volatile chemical. He hated his feelings; they were noxious and caused him to do and say stupid things he couldn't take back and if only he didn't have them--

Salty was reaching for the door handle, and then his hand was on it and turning it to yank it open.

"Wait--Salty--Jarrod!" Ian cried desperately.

He saw Salty stop, and then he saw Salty's shoulders rise and fall with the deep breath he took, in and out, before turning back to look at Ian again, his hand still on the door. Something in his face made Ian's chest hurt.

"I--" Ian began, searching frantically for something meaningful to say as Salty watched him, waiting. "I--Tess and I split up," he blurted.

Salty's eyebrows went up, his face blanking. "When did that happen?"

"Before I came here," Ian said miserably. "I think we're--I think I'm getting a divorce."

Salty frowned. "Well--are you...you know. Okay?"

Ian shrugged noncommittally, though his own mouth was tugging down at the corners.

"Is that the real reason you called me over here? So you could talk about it?" Salty said.

"No," Ian said. "No, I really did just--I don't know how to keep going or--or move on with this, and you're the only other person who went through it too but even when it was happening you were handling it better and--I try not to think about any of it but what if that's the whole problem? That I've tried not to think about a lot of things for my whole life but at a certain point I can't...can't do that anymore? And I think about why now, why, when I need to hold everything together the most, why have I started _doubting_ everything--"

"What are you doubting?" Salty asked quietly.

Ian opened his mouth to reply but found that he had abruptly lost his voice, because nothing came out. All he could do was stare at Salty beseechingly, hoping that Salty would understand what Ian was unable to say in words.

"So this isn't even about what we went through down there, is it?" Salty said.

"I don't even know who I am anymore," Ian said, hearing his voice crack and feeling his eyes water, hating the words because they sounded so banal, so utterly clichéd, but they were the truth, and the root of all his problems, and Salty seemed like the only person who could possibly help him find himself again.

Salty watched Ian for a moment, and then he let his hand fall away from the door handle, and Ian tried not to let this tiny motion make him too hopeful.

"Let me tell you something," Salty said at last. "All I want from you--all anyone wants from anyone else is the truth."

"But--what if you don't know what the truth even is?" Ian said.

"Ian," Salty said quietly, "I think you do know."

Ian looked up into Salty's eyes, his own limbs frozen with fear and doubt. He was on a precipice, he knew, but he also knew that he'd called Salty because he wanted to be flung off of it, or maybe just for Salty to hold his hand as they both jumped.

"I've been so fucking miserable since we got back," Ian said, pleading with his voice and his eyes, since he didn't know how to with his words.

Salty frowned, and Ian knew that he had to do better than that.

"I missed you," he said with difficulty. "And I--I keep looking for a reason. When we were--when things were real bad--even though we were broken down and I wasn't sure whether we'd live through it, being with you was like--for the first time in my life things felt...I don't know. Whole, maybe. I'd never felt that before, like before I didn't even know what I was missing. And it's weird because I didn't even think--I didn't think before that we were even friends."

Salty was still frowning.

"Do you remember," Ian said, wetting his dry lips, "do you remember when you told me that your wife is the only one who gets you?"

"Yeah," Salty said.

"I just--for me--you're the only one who knows what it was like."

"Ian," Salty said sorrowfully.

"I know, I know," Ian said quickly. "I saw you in the hospital with your wife--you were both asleep on the bed together and I just--I've never felt as close to anyone as you two looked there."

"Ian, Ash and me are separated too," Salty said. "We talked about it there in the hospital."

All the swirling emotions in Ian's chest seemed to freeze and then sink all the way through the floor. "What?" he said.

"She's always gonna be a part of my life but we decided it was the right thing. That's when I still thought you and me--" He broke off, biting his lip.

"I'm sorry," Ian blurted.

"It had to happen," Salty said. "Whatever else was gonna happen between you and me. You changed me too, Ian."

Ian didn't know how to believe that. He swallowed hard, wondering how he could say it. He felt so strange, young and awkward and innocent but starving for knowledge of something he could feel lying just beyond his reach.

"Did I?" he said, wanting Salty to say more but unsure how to ask him for it.

"Of course you did," Salty said, smiling lopsidedly. "You just wouldn't let me pretend, to you or to myself."

"A lot of people would say that's a bad thing," Ian said, though Salty's words made him feel hopeful for the first time in a while.

"It's only bad if you don't live with the consequences of admitting the truth," Salty said. And then he paused, looking at Ian for a long time. "I wanted you," he said quietly, after a while. "I wanted to be with you."

"What if it's only because of what we went through?" Ian said. "That's what I've been wondering. What if it's not real?"

"I can't answer that for you," Salty said. "All I can say is--there's things about you I loved before all this. I never thought of the rest of it before we was trapped together but...every time I saw you, back when it was every day, you made me want to be close to you, when you were messin' around in the clubhouse or mad as fire or even when we was losing so bad and you'd be sittin' all by yourself on the bus looking like you had the weight of the world on you."

"I used to get so mad at how you put yourself in a position to be made fun of," Ian said.

Salty was quiet.

"I was stupid, I didn't know," Ian said, looking back up at Salty. "I didn't know what it meant that I felt that way."

"What did it mean?" Salty said.

"That I wanted to protect you from all that," Ian said, feeling exposed. "That it wasn't you I was mad at, I was mad at everyone else for not seeing. And when we were locked in that cell together it was the same--you'd say things that made me uncomfortable because I knew how everyone else would hear those words but there was no one else there, and I knew what you meant and I wanted you to say more and--and I just wanted you."

"Ian," Salty said, his voice warm.

"Because you're strong, stronger than I am, and I would've broken down in there without you holding everything together."

Salty came forward then and wrapped his arms around Ian, pulling him close. Ian felt breathless for a moment, but then Salty's warmth seeped through his entire body and Salty squeezed him tightly, and Ian turned his head to rest his cheek against Salty's collarbone, clinging closer.

"I want to give it one shot," Ian said into Salty's chest, unable to look at Salty but needing to ask for this, something he hadn't acknowledged that he truly wanted even to himself until he'd seen Salty standing there in his doorway. "For real. Not like--not like what we did that day in that cell. Just once where we both give it everything we've got. And then--and then it'll be fair, right? Then we'll both know once and for all."

Salty pulled back a little and smiled down at Ian, blindingly beautiful. "We're gonna be okay," Salty said, setting Ian down but still holding him close. "I know it."

"Yeah," Ian said, reaching up tentatively and hooking his hands behind Salty's back, leaning into his big, solid body. He squeezed, feeling Salty laugh a little, and they both pulled back just enough so that Salty could lean down and kiss Ian right on the mouth.

*

They ended up trying about three times that night, it turned out. The first time Ian could barely look at Salty, shy and very much ashamed of how much his body obviously wanted this when he'd been trying so hard to convince both Salty and himself that he didn't want it at all, at least not sincerely, not as anything beyond a joke or a way to mess with Salty.

When he looked down at himself and his own naked body laid out on the bed, flushed and blotchy where Salty had squeezed or kissed or sucked or pressed up against him, and then back up at Salty who was looking down at him appreciatively, he had to squeeze his eyes shut and curl up on his side. But Salty knew, somehow, not to take offense or to laugh, merely spooning up behind Ian and jerking him off that way, kissing the back of Ian's neck and saying things that made Ian want to stretch out and open up. So he did, arching backward and turning his head back, and when he came it was with one of Salty's hands flat on his stomach, holding him steady. 

Salty caught him even though Ian had nowhere to fall, and Ian was so grateful that when he got his breath back a little he turned around and looked deeply into Salty's eyes.

"I wanna suck your cock," he said.

Salty laughed, his head falling back on the pillow, and Ian promptly leaned forward to kiss and lick at his neck. He was so happy, and he wanted to make Salty happy, and he'd never felt this way before, not just because of one person.

There were a few hiccups, namely that Ian got a hair in his mouth and gagged copiously at first, but when Salty pushed him off abruptly and then shot his load all over Ian's chest Ian felt so gratified and proud of himself that it was almost better than when he'd shot his own load a few minutes earlier.

"I just made you come with my mouth," he said, surprised and pleased.

"You sure did," Salty said, his voice so lazy and drawly that Ian felt his own cock stirring again.

But it was too soon, so they just lay there next to each other. It was late, Ian knew, and they both had to be up pretty early for workouts the next day, but he didn't care. His mind was suddenly full of plans for the future, for all the time they could spend together in Arizona before the season started, how Salty could meet and spend time with his kids, how they'd be able to plan meetups during the season despite playing in different leagues. Maybe they could go on a vacation together during the All-Star Break, assuming, of course, that neither of them were All-Stars. Maybe, if it all worked out, they could get a house together and live in it during the offseason. A ranch, maybe. Salty was a country dude, he'd probably be into that, right? Somewhere far away from other people, somewhere they could lock themselves in and the world out by choice, instead of being forced together by criminals.

"I don't know what I would've done if they hadn't taken us together," Ian said quietly, in the middle of the night, after they'd turned the lights off. Salty's arm was around his shoulder loosely, and Ian was resting his head against Salty's chest.

Salty didn't answer. Maybe he was asleep, Ian thought.

But then Salty slowly rolled over, right on top of Ian, resting his weight on his forearms next to Ian's head.

"I love you," he said, and he smiled, nudging his nose against Ian's cheek before kissing him again.

This one felt different from their first one, deeper and sloppier and more intimate, and Ian could only hold onto Salty's sides with his small hands, at the mercy of something bigger and stronger and more overwhelming than either of them in that moment.

They rubbed each other off that way, facing each other, breathing the same air, their faces so close. Somehow Salty ended up between Ian's legs, frotting up tightly just under Ian's dick, and the position was so scary and exciting that despite having come so recently, Ian found himself shocked into coming painfully, and when Salty felt it he kissed Ian again, gathering Ian up and coming himself again after pushing a few more times with his hips.

It made Ian want more, want everything, to find every possible way, physical or emotional, of getting closer to Salty. The feeling was frightening in its intensity, and he wondered if it was always like this for people in love.

"Did you know?" Ian choked out, clinging to Salty tightly.

"Know what, baby?" Salty said, looking down at him, his eyes clear even in the darkness.

"Did you always know it would be like this?"

"No," Salty said. "I didn't."

"I think I was scared of you from the first time we met. Well, not _scared_ , but--maybe I did know."

"See," Salty said, leaning to the side and wrapping his arms around Ian again. "That's who you are. You knew all along."

Ian pondered this for a while. 

"I know everything," Ian announced smugly after a few minutes had passed.

Salty chuckled and kissed Ian's neck. "Well, you know how to do that sexy li'l dance, anyway. I'll always love you for that."

Ian shoved Salty indignantly. "I'm at the _crossroads of my life_ here and you're talking about a stupid dance I did just to get you to stop sulking."

"What can I say? I think I'll remember you dancin' in your underwear in that dirty little cell 'til the day I die," Salty said.

"You're an idiot," Ian said, but it was amazing, really, how Salty could make a terrible time in both of their lives seem like a memory to be cherished in their old age. Would they still be together then? It was simultaneously easy and difficult to picture, but suddenly the world seemed to hold infinite possibilities. For the first time Ian felt like every part of himself that he'd kept bound up and powerless in darkness had been brought into the light.

 

 

end

**Author's Note:**

> Ian really has talked about learning salsa. The interview (which is otherwise worthless, since you can tell that all the interviewer did to prepare for it was look up Ian's wikipedia page) is [here](http://anonym.to/?http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/06/22/nbc-sportstalk-one-on-one-with-ian-kinsler/), relevant part at about 1:23.
> 
>  **Interviewer:** How's your salsa dancing these days, you any good?  
>  **Ian:** It's terrible, it's terrible. I give it an effort, though. I'm not scared to give it a try and--and have these guys try and get my hips moving, but, you know, that's a tough dance to learn.


End file.
